Re: Cake, Pie or Ice Cream? (was: Re: Lojban is *NOT* broken! Stop saying that! (was Re: [lojban] Re: Vote for the Future Global Language))

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 2:51 PM, Ian Johnson <blindbravado@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> That reminds me, actually; why does the grammar refuse:
> LE SELBRI JOI LE SELBRI

The PEG grammar has no problem with it.

> ? Why can't JOI realize "left side is sumti, right side is sumti, so ku is
> implied on left side"? Does the grammar not have enough lookahead, or
> something?

The official grammar is supposed to have only one token lookahead. In
fact that's not true, because the preparser used by the official
parser still needs infinite lookahead. For example, if you get a PA,
you have no way of knowing whether you are getting a sumti or a selbri
or a free modifier until you reach the end of the string of PAs, and
there's no limit to how many PA's you could get. So PA strings were
handled by the preparser instead of by the parser proper. (And
similarly for some other stuff.) The lexer also needs infinite
lookahead. For example, you don't know that you are getting a cmevla
until you get a consonant followed by a pause, and that could take any
number of tokens of lookahead. So Lojban is not and never was LALR(1).

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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