From lojbab@lojban.org Sun Jul 13 14:29:22 2003 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojbab@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (qmail 48055 invoked from network); 13 Jul 2003 21:29:21 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.217) by m12.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 13 Jul 2003 21:29:21 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO lakemtao02.cox.net) (68.1.17.243) by mta2.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 13 Jul 2003 21:29:21 -0000 Received: from bob.lojban.org ([68.100.92.1]) by lakemtao02.cox.net (InterMail vM.5.01.04.05 201-253-122-122-105-20011231) with ESMTP id <20030713212918.WXDS24359.lakemtao02.cox.net@bob.lojban.org> for ; Sun, 13 Jul 2003 17:29:18 -0400 Message-Id: <5.2.0.9.0.20030713171957.034e21b0@pop.east.cox.net> X-Sender: rlechevalier@pop.east.cox.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.2.0.9 Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2003 17:24:41 -0400 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] more errors in EBNF rules (and other comments) In-Reply-To: <1d8.dc6e8e5.2c42d21a@wmconnect.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed From: Robert LeChevalier X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=1120595 X-Yahoo-Profile: lojbab X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 20360 At 11:17 AM 7/13/03 -0400, MorphemeAddict@wmconnect.com wrote: >In looking through the wiki list of grammar rule typos in the Red Book, I >noticed they all had large spaces where the missing "|" was supposed to >be, so I looked through the whole EBNF grammar for more large spaces, and >I found two more, which I then compared with the YACC version: > >... >Why was so much alteration made to the EBNF version when a straightforward >rewrite of the YACC would have been clearer? The YACC version was always considered the definitive grammar, but some people preferred the simpler and for them easier to read EBNF. Unfortunately, no one ever spent a lot of time developing the EBNF - it was just casually done whenever we redid the YACC grammar. Only as we readied CLL for publication, did Clark Nelson go through the EBNF with care, wherein he found many errors and also found a few errors in the YACC by implication. But that one-man vetting of the EBNF, with no formal computer verification, was the most that the EBNF was ever subjected to, while the YACC has been tested multiple times in generating parsers and random sentence generators, in addition to the formal checking that YACC does itself. lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org