Re: [lojban] Re: y: what is it good for?

[Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>]

On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 10:21:40PM +0100, Zefram wrote:
> Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> >Not a special case?  How is an erase word that doesn't erase anything
> >not a special case?
> 
> It's exactly as special as the other erasure words.  Among the erasure
> words its difference from the others is exactly the same type of
> difference they have from each other: how much they erase. Erasing
> nothing is a unique meaning, but every cmavo has a unique meaning.
> 
> It's not-a-special-case in the sense that no mechanisms are required
> solely to support it.  It's just part of the erasure system.

Sorry, I wasn't able to see the forest for the trees.

*Every* erasure word requires heaps of grammatical wrangling; talking
about "the erasure system" as a unified whole just makes no sense to me
at this point.  Each erasure word is handled *utterly* differently.

Removing SI, SA and SU would literally *halve* the size of the PEG
grammar.

I'm not kidding.

rlpowell@chain> wc -l ../lojban.peg
1187 ../lojban.peg
rlpowell@chain> egrep -v "(S[IAU]|-sa-)" ../lojban.peg | wc -l
667

To be fair, most of that is SA handling, but still.

-Robin

-- 
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