Pragma syntax

Andrew Tween amtween at hotmail.com
Sat Aug 19 09:21:03 UTC 2006


Hi Lukas,

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lukas Renggli" <renggli at gmail.com>
To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list"
<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Saturday, August 19, 2006 9:49 AM
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Pragma syntax


> > > <1> and the FFI syntax don't comply to this definition.
> >
> > If that is the definition, then aren't  <+ 2>  , << 'a'>  and  <> 4> also
> > pragmas?
> > It would be nicely consistent if they were.
>
> I should try to be more precise: "A pragma is a message-send composed
> of a **unary** or **keyword** selector and a literal array of
> arguments."

But, why is that the definition? Why not binary selectors? Is it...
    because VW doesn't allow binary selectors?
    because the grammar would become ambiguous?
    the free stuff (searching for senders) wouldn't work with binaries?
    nobody suggested it?
    considered unnecessary?

I can't think of a good reason not to allow binary selectors, unless there is a
fundemental problem that can't easily be solved.

>
> > > > > - Introduce a similar correction mechanism for pragmas as we do for
> > > > > message selectors that are unknown to the system. This would pop-up a
> > > > > message in case the pragma is not already known to the system and
> > > > > allow the user to proceed or correct it. I think this would be a nice
> > > > > solution, though it has the drawback that once you misspelled your
> > > > > pragma you don't get a warning anymore.
> > >
> > > > That seems like a better solution.
> > >
> > > I can come up with a fix for that.
>
> I implemented it yesterday in the train. It makes the implementation
> even simpler and uses the same code to correct the selector if unknown
> as for normal message sends. I will submit the fix soon on mantis.

Excellent. I'll test it out once it's there.
Cheers,
Andy

>
> Cheers,
> Lukas
>
> -- 
> Lukas Renggli
> http://www.lukas-renggli.ch
>
>




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