Re: [mi] -stack-list-arguments --simple-values

[nickrob@snap.net.nz (Nick Roberts)]

 > > One reason why, in Emacs, we don't fully parse MI output, but use regular
 > > expression matching, is because of these inconsistencies.
 > 
 > Can you clarify this? KDevelop does use a parser and convert MI into
 > a convenient internal representation, so it is clearly possible in C++.
 > I don't know much about Emacs internals -- is there some problem with
 > parsing methods available there?

We're just starting to fully use MI in Emacs and formally parse (Dmitry) the
output but I would think it's possible parse anything in Emacs (Lisp) and it's
just a question of complexity.

 >  
 > > People often lament the poor syntax of MI but it really needs a plan to
 > > replace it with something better.  However, such a plan would really need a
 > > maintainer to lead it and doesn't really work on a Write After Approval basis.
 > 
 > FWIW, both the above issue is universally believed to be not good, so
 > patches to introduce MI3 version and switch select commands to "right"
 > syntax appear to be fairly simple.

I quite like the idea of incrementally changing the output with new commands
because as soon as MI3 is released, you can be sure people will find
shortcomings with that.  You could say it is a more agile approach.

-- 
Nick                                           http://www.inet.net.nz/~nickrob