[plug] Languages

[The Thought Assassin]

On Wed, 4 Apr 2001, Mike Holland wrote:
> 1) use yacc
>        Yacc reads the grammar specification in the file  filename
>        and generates an LR(1) parser for it.

This is perhaps a good idea for a compiled language, although one would
hope a parser for a "simple" language would be easier to write by hand.
In this instance, though, I doubt a compiled language is called for.

Indeed, you seem to have thought of that:

> 2) Start with an existing extensible language like forth or Tcl.

Yep, this is another wise idea, though I'd have recommended them for
their embeddability rather then their extensibility. Bear in mind that
neither of them are suitable for non-programmers, though, which may be the
target audience judging from the bit about accounting.

>    Tcl lets you create your own commands and syntax,

It lets you write your own functions, but so do most languages. In what
way does it let you write commands/syntax in a way other languages don't?

>    and has an excellent gui toolkit 'Tk'.

I'd advise against embedding Tk. Embed Tcl and use whatever windowing
framework you are already using, so that you visual environment remains
tightly under the control of the main program.

I'm afraid we need to invoke the standard PLUG warcry: "give us more
details!" so that we can give better (more detailed :) advice.

-Greg Mildenhall