Reserved identifiers, was Re: Thoughts on moving towards ANSI

David Collier-Brown daveb at geaclib.UUCP
Wed Feb 15 11:47:27 AEST 1989


> In article <3669 at geaclib.UUCP>, daveb at geaclib.UUCP (David Collier-Brown) writes...
>>  At some point the compiler-writers are going to have to start
>>thinking about known (often partial) solutions to the namespace
>>pollution problems of simple languages like C. (and PL/1, lest
>>anyone think I'm being snarky with the use of "simple").
>>  Several of these are
>> ...
>>	4) controlled vocabulary
>>		a) the following 5280 words are reserved...

>From article <50499 at yale-celray.yale.UUCP>, by leichter at cs.yale.edu (Jerry Leichter):
> PL/I has its share of problems, but one it has NEVER had is namespace pollu-
> tion.  There are NO reserved words in PL/I!

   Agreed wholeheartedly!

   I should probably add 
	4b) No reserved words
and suggest its achievement by selective initiation, as done in
Multics Pl/1 (which, on reflection, sounds like a sufficent tool when
used with a binder to achieve our main end...)

--dave (I occasionally describe C as PL/1 after a very harsh
  editor said "Too many words! Take some out.") c-b
-- 
 David Collier-Brown.  | yunexus!lethe!dave
 Interleaf Canada Inc. |
 1550 Enterprise Rd.   | He's so smart he's dumb.
 Mississauga, Ontario  |       --Joyce C-B



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