+ 1

this is why we often do not launch a metacompiler such as Smacc for  
simple languages.
We often use class and selector the parsing, debugging, storage is  
free. Even the refactoring.
Especially during a PhD I would work at that level and in 10 years  
when your language will
be the mainstream language for trial you create a real compiler. This  
is at least the advice
I gave to some friends of mine when they started to open Yacc/lex  
even before understanding
deeply what they wanted to express.

Stef

On 17 août 06, at 12:52, David T. Lewis wrote:

> When brings us back to your DLS question. Michael Latta's advice
> is very good: Try implementing your language as classes and
> methods that read well and make sense to people. you can read the
> source code for this in from a configuration file if you want.
> If that turns out not to be sufficient for your needs, you can
> implement any language syntax you like using SmaCC (parser
> generator like lex/yacc for Smalltalk). SmaCC is on SqueakMap
> also.