Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!njin!princeton!phoenix!haahr
From: haahr@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Paul Gluckauf Haahr)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Dumb Lexical Analyzers are Smart
Message-ID: <3723@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 21 Sep 88 21:06:07 GMT
References: <5200026@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Reply-To: haahr@princeton.edu (Paul Gluckauf Haahr)
Organization: Princeton University, Princeton NJ
Lines: 20

in article <5200026@m.cs.uiuc.edu> wsmith@m.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
> What I would like to do in a new language is make the lexical analyzer
> have more lexical categories.  For example, TypeIdentifier and
> variableidentifier would be lexically different because the first has
> an initial uppercase letter while the second doesn't.  If other
> categories of identifiers are needed, they may be defined to be
> identifiers-with-a-minus-sign or under_scored or Under_Scored each
> could belong to a different category if there was a valid semantic
> reason to distinguish between them.

a suggestion: how about reserving all identifiers that start with i
through n (the first two letters of "integer") for integers, and
assuming all other identifiers are real.  that way, a compiler would
not have to put information about the type in the symbol table, it
could just look at the first character, and we can do away with
declarations.

i believe there was once a programming language that did this :-)

paul (princeton!haahr)