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From: hbaker@netcom.com (Henry Baker)
Subject: Re: Unix Weenies (formerly: Removing READ)
Message-ID: <hbaker-2702950000300001@192.0.2.1>
Sender: hbaker@netcom4.netcom.com
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References: <bakulD4L23y.I25@netcom.com> <26Feb1995.015316.Alan@LCS.MIT.EDU> <bakulD4MvL5.AG4@netcom.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 1995 07:58:53 GMT
Lines: 22

In article <bakulD4MvL5.AG4@netcom.com>, bakul@netcom.com (Bakul Shah) wrote:

>I also gave you a number of examples where the
> user does customization in the same language that he needs to
> know anyway to use the program in question.

Uh...  What language do you suggest that I write my natural language
parsing/generating init file in?  English??  German??  Esperanto??

What language do I use for a program which has no 'language' at all --
e.g., configuring the device drivers in an operating system, or my
favorite example _linking loaders_, which have got the have the most
god-forsaken syntax ever invented.  (How _did_ this people ever pass
a C.S. course?  Uh... I think I just answered my own question.)

I think that it is perfectly reasonable to write init files in a standard
language which is expressive enough to be able to simply and obviously
express tree-structured data.

It's one heck of a lot better than these silly pseudo-C syntaxes, that
aren't quite C, so your C reflexes are worthless, and aren't quite
anything else, either.
