[lojban] Re: Is Lojban a CFG? (was Re: [lojban-beginners] Re: Enumerating in Lojban)

[Robin Lee Powell <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

On Thu, Jul 13, 2006 at 02:54:36PM -0300, Jorge Llamb?as wrote:
> On 7/13/06, Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:
> >On Thu, Jul 13, 2006 at 11:09:49AM -0300, Jorge Llamb?as wrote:
> >> At least in principle, because maybe the required PEG might be
> >> way too complicated to write. Or maybe not, we can at least
> >> try.
> >
> >Erm.  camxes is a PEG that parses Lojban as currently defined.
> >You helped build it...  Perhaps you meant CFG there?
> 
> camxes parses Lojban as defined by camxes. It is not a perfect
> match for Lojban as defined in CLL, even though it's pretty close.
> (And some things were actually left undefined by CLL, such as the
> SA mess.) 

It's a *lot* closer than any CFG could be, though, as far as I can
tell.

> >> But I don't know how hard it would be to modify the whole PEG
> >> so that it fully corresponds to a CFG.
> >
> >I don't see the point of doing so; if we're going to make a CFG,
> >we should use CFGs to do so, no make a CFG-alike PEG.
> 
> But then we wouldn't have unambiguity in a straightforward way. 

It is possible to construct unambigious CFGs.

> A reasonable question is why not have both if we could have both.
> Maybe there are good reasons not to do it (and I suspect there are
> some) but at least for me "that's just the way it is" is not a
> very convincing reason.

Sure.

> >I just don't see the point of butchering Lojban to make a CFG
> >that encodes a language that is almost, but not quite, Lojban.
> 
> It wouldn't be butchering it, just extending it.

I don't see it that way, myself.  I rather like the current
behaviour (barfing on wierd input).

-Robin

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