Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ico!vail!rcd From: rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn) Newsgroups: comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Question on programming languages ("foreign" keywords) Summary: translation is not that easy Message-ID: <16126@vail.ICO.ISC.COM> Date: 25 Sep 89 17:54:30 GMT References: <8720001@hplsla.HP.COM> <89267.181118UH2@PSUVM.BITNET> Organization: Interactive Systems Corp, Boulder, CO Lines: 26 The question was whether there are programming languages based on some language other than English, e.g. with keywords in some other language. In article <89267.181118UH2@PSUVM.BITNET>, UH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer) writes: > I've seen one. Years ago I saw some source code which I believe > was ALGOL, except that all the Keywords were auf Deutsch... . . .[example deleted] > Seems like this would be pretty easy to do if you had the source > to the translater, or using a simple preprocessor for a compiled > language. You can modify the translator easily enough, but you end up with a different language because (for most languages) you can't do a simple translation without getting into trouble. The problem is that the key- words, when translated, may collide with identifiers in the program-- which is a problem in most languages. (And if you look for identifier collisions and remap them, you'll mess up the comments, etc.) The reason that virtually all programming languages use English for keywords is simply to have one standard representation for programs. Trying to allow multiple languages gets you into portability problems. The anglo-centric view--like it or not, it's there--says that a language using keywords other than English doesn't stand a chance outside its own country. -- Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com uucp: {ncar,nbires}!ico!rcd (303)449-2870 ...I'm not cynical - just experienced.