[pypy-dev] Interesting project

[Armin Rigo]

Hello Stephan,

On Tue, Oct 28, 2003 at 09:53:14AM +0100, Stephan Diehl wrote:
> At a first glance, it looks like an operating system (on top of Linux)
> written in a python alike language (indentation is significant, so it MUST
> be similar to Python :-)

I know about it, it is a cool project because the language is to some extent
self-defined -- you can access the parser and compiler from a module and
change anything.  However there are aspects I don't like.  For one thing the
language is defined first by a C core, on top of which a first layer adds more
syntax, on top of which yet another layer adds more (sounds cool but it isn't
very useful for the language user who still cannot modify these layers easily
from his program).  Another example: a library can access the syntax tree
containing calls to its exported functions, which is nice for example to
replace "(x**y)%z" with a "pow(x,y,z)" automatically.  But it is a bit of
syntactic magic, because if you write (the Pliant equivalent to):

   a = x ** y
   b = a % z

then it won't notice it.

Also note that there are actually a number of languages in which indentation
is significant (e.g. O'Caml) but as in Pliant it is actually an "abbreviation"  
to mean something else with braces -- and you can use braces if you prefer.  
Python is the only language I know in which there are really no braces (or
equivalent).


A bientot,

Armin.