From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2002-10-13T01:37:10+09:00
Subject: Re: Confusion on Keywords

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Tj" <billtj@glue.umd.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Friday, October 11, 2002 11:33 PM
Subject: Re: Confusion on Keywords


> If "identifier" is used
> as in the "C: A Reference Manual" book, definitely it is not a single
> identifier.  My confusion stems from the fact that, I think, in some
> other language like C, keywords have very high precedence during
> lexing and parsing.  Therefore, when we get to the level where we know
> that "anObject.class" is three tokens, it surprised me that back then,
> after we know that the second token signifies a method call, the lexer
> still treats the third token as a possible keyword instead of just an
> arbitrary string token, and this back then necessitated the invention
> of the method "type".

I think I understand you now. 

I don't understand the intimate details of
how Ruby is parsed, though. It has been ages
since I wrote a real parser, and then it was
not as sophisticated as Ruby's.

I like to treat Ruby's parser the way I treat
electricity: I flip a switch, and it works, 
and I am glad someone else understands it.

Of course, that's a huge admission from
someone who calls himself a programmer. :)

Hal