Coding Standards

[Evan Bigall]

All this talk of coding standards has reminded me of and idea for a program
I was almost involved in writing.... 

Once upon a time I was taking a class on software engineering, and we were    
thinking of ideas for a fairly substantial semester project for five.  One 
of the ideas tossed around (I think original credit goes to Dan Nachbar) 
was to write a P'er.  It would consist of two parts, the first part would 
take as input a grammar for the language, and a substantial (yes substantial
is a very nebulous term) amount of code in the style of the user.  The output 
would be a data file describing the relationships between the different 
grammatical constructs.  The second part (by far the easier) would take as 
input the data file and some code not in the style of the user.  The program 
would then pee on the code, ie: convert it to the users style. 

Sounds like a great idea?  Unfortunatly as we tried to solidify the idea we 
ran into a mess of problems, (what to do about inconsistencies and 
incompleteness in the users sample....).  I was never conviced that the 
idea was completely unworkable, but because the emphasis of the class was on
the execution of a large but fairly straightforward project and not on
producing the coolest pice of software possible we tossed the idea.  Its one
of those things that has been at the back of my mind for a long time.  Any
one care to comment on the feasability or maybe even take up the banner?
Evan
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Evan J Bigall (408)943-2283
{most backbones}!sun!plx!evan
I barely have the authority to speak for myself, certainly not anybody else.