Tagged Questions
1
vote
2answers
166 views
Should I use a formal grammar for my interpreted scripting language
I have a scripting engine I just published as an open source project. It's been sitting on my harddrive waiting for about a year. My engine of course isn't complete in any way, but it does work for ...
9
votes
4answers
911 views
Is garbage collection needed for implementing safe closures?
I recently attended an online course on programming languages in which, among other concepts, closures were presented. I write down two examples inspired by this course to give some context before ...
1
vote
3answers
221 views
Why are the arguments for substring functions mismatched?
In many languages, the substring function works like this:
substring(startIndex, endIndex)
returns the substring from startIndex until endIndex-1 (if you view startIndex and endIndex as 0-based) / ...
10
votes
7answers
328 views
What is a good alternative to the name variable for a language that only has immutable references or labels?
For example, in functional languages, variables are single assignment and their values are immutable once assigned. So they have two states unbound and bound, once bound they can't be changed.
Is ...
3
votes
6answers
327 views
Would the concept of source code layers be of any use?
I'm talking about something like layers in photoshop, except they apply directly to the source code. For example, in pseudo-code... inventing what some project might look like - say a computational ...
2
votes
2answers
597 views
What is the reason behind the if syntax of CoffeeScript?
In most other languages the condition comes before the statement to be executed when the condition is met. However, in CoffeeScript (and maybe some other languages) the syntax is:
number = -42 if ...
12
votes
7answers
893 views
Why don't more languages support recursive/nested comments? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Why do most programming languages not nest block comments?
Most languages I've worked with don't have support for recursive/nested comments.
Is there any reason why ...
2
votes
1answer
211 views
Is a partially familiar scripting language desirable?
Given that a program (under development) needs a scripting language, and that for various reasons it's not possible to use an off-the-shelf one as is, I'm considering basing it on the syntax and some ...
