From: Ryan Davis Date: 2010-08-24T15:38:42+09:00 Subject: Re: Ruby Code Parsing On Aug 23, 2010, at 08:10 , Chad Perrin wrote: > On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 04:20:54PM +0900, Ryan Davis wrote: >> On Aug 22, 2010, at 20:12 , Chad Perrin wrote: >>> >>> On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 08:38:40AM +0900, Caleb Clausen wrote: >>>> >>>> Ruby is designed to be easy for humans to read, which means it is not >>>> easy for computers to parse. As opposed to say, perl, which is hard >>>> for both humans and computers to parse. If you were to write down in >>>> one email a complete set of rules, it would be a pretty long email. >>> >>> I find Perl pretty easy to parse. Maybe yours is a personal problem. >> >> No, you do not find perl pretty easy to parse. Last time I checked, you >> can NOT statically parse perl. You have to evaluate it in order to get >> a proper parse. So, you find it pretty easy to evaluate. No easy task >> for me, I'll admit, but there is no reason for you to be an ass about >> it. > > Regardless of nitpicky phrasing, I found your comment about Perl kind of > ass-ish. It seems kind of ironic to be called an ass for pointing out > that your problems with Perl may not be others' problems, when you make a > categorical deprecating statement about Perl. There is nothing nitpicky about it. YOU _can't_ parse perl, yet you claim you can and that it is pretty easy. If you think it is so easy, here is a challenge: write a parser for perl in ruby. It can't be that hard, right? I have one in ruby, and it "only" took 145 commits (so far) to do. I don't care what type of parser style you choose (LALR, RDP, PEG, etc), and I don't care if you choose to port someone else's parser to ruby... but you can NOT evaluate/interpret the code in order to determine your parse trees. It has to be a 100% static parse. P.S. Even tho it was Caleb who made the "deprecating statement" about perl (nice double-entendre considering we're all still waiting for perl 6... 10 years later), I totally agree with him on this one.