From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <d2d1b9ba56eb1f28c751d34dd852cdb5@quanstro.net>
From: erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:26:41 -0400
To: 9fans@9fans.net
In-Reply-To: <3aaafc130908201414j7556ea81nfafbb54985f02ca1@mail.gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [9fans] Recursive structural expressions?
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 4f8006b0-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

> 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