From: Ryan Pavlik <rpav@...>
Date: 2003-04-12T09:11:34+09:00
Subject: Re: The "!" and "?" characters.

On Sat, 12 Apr 2003 04:46:05 +0900
KONTRA Gergely <kgergely@mlabdial.hit.bme.hu> wrote:

> By the way why not allow to define new operators, like in prolog and
> sml?
<snip>

I've talked about this from time to time on #ruby-lang.  It's not
going to happen, unfortunately, but it would be nice.  In Lisp, you
can define macros (note: not _anything_ like #define macros; same
word, different meaning), and even modify the reader (lisp's
equivalent of a parser), so you can add new literals and basically
anything else.  For instance, while Common Lisp defines no regexp
literal (like /^foo$/), you could easily add one.

Ruby uses a yacc parser though, and this sort of parser is not mutable.
For a syntax as complex as Ruby's, this is nice, since it's easier to
write, maintain, and probably runs faster.  But it means you can't
define a new operator, since both the tokens and parser were defined at
compile time.

At least, this is what I've gathered, if I'm wrong, someone please
correct my mistake.

-- 
Ryan Pavlik <rpav@users.sf.net>

"That's the first pratical line of thinking to
 come out of your word hole since we first met." - 8BT