Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!unc!mcnc!decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!hplabs!sri-unix!Shebs@UTAH-20 From: Shebs%UTAH-20@sri-unix.UUCP Newsgroups: net.lang.prolog Subject: Prolog Syntax Message-ID: <739@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Tue, 29-May-84 07:47:06 EDT Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.739 Posted: Tue May 29 07:47:06 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 12-Jun-84 07:01:52 EDT Lines: 24 From: Stan ShebsThe exchanges between Dave Bowen and Richard O'Keefe about Prolog syntax are hard for me to understand. As a Lisper I only approve of syntax when certain constructs appear so frequently that it's time to define a readmacro. The nature of the readmacro definition process is such that it's very difficult to overload any readmacro character, so that almost no symbols ( the period being an exception) have more than one meaning. I should perhaps mention that the PSL dialect of Lisp has long had an Algolized frontend called Rlisp, and in fact most of the original PSL sources are still written in Rlisp. Despite all the syntax, Rlisp is much more difficult to read, and is now only used by people doing lots of computational and algebra work. The moral? Syntax is not such a Good Thing after all. The Prolog Standard should be a fully parenthesized Prolog, with real names for all of the builtin predicates. Those who can't tear themselves away from syntax, or who just love to have peculiar symbols floating about their code, can spend their time building elaborate parsers (but of course building a Prolog parser in Prolog is easy, right?). I defy anyone to define a data and program representation more general, elegant, and consistent than s-expressions... -- Stan Shebs