Re: [9fans] Recursive structural expressions?

[erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>]

> No, I know you can apply them `recursively', I mean something more
> like an expression in a CFG or yacc.
>
> >
> > can you outline somehow what you're thinking of?
>
> Basically, if you could take a bracketed expression in sam and then
> name it, and then call it recursively.
>
> All the problems with CFGs (shift/reduce problems, ambiguities, etc)
> would possibly apply.

could you give an example in your proposed language?
i don't see how greedy regular expressions wouldn't kill you.
example.  let's say you have a SRE that breaks text into lines,
you couldn't apply that recursively.  in fact i think you'd have
the same problem with any SRE, since they are greedy and
can't count.

maybe i'm just confused because 'x' goes from a blob of text
to a stream of tokens.  where as grammars go from a stream
of tokens to productions.  maybe you mean to replace the
traditional tokenizer with named SREs?

- erik