Re: [lojban] more errors in EBNF rules (and other comments)

[Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org>]

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