Re: [PATCH:doc] GDB/MI attribute names

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

 > > How about:
 > > 
 > >    @var{variable} names should be specified as a sequence of alphabetic
 > >    characters and underscores.
 > 
 > It seem to me to introduce too many indirection levels. We don't have something
 > called 'variable' that also has name, that is also 'specified' by something
 > separate. Why not:
 > 
 >      The @var{variable} nonterminal in the above grammar may contain only
 >      alphanumeric characters or the underscore character.
 > 
 > ? This is probably not 100% accurate either, since nonterminals do not
 > contain characters but have terminal strings derived from them, which
 > strings consist of characters, but I presume we're not writing a PhD here
 > ;-)

I had to look up `nonterminal' in Wikipedia where it talks about
Backus?Naur Form.  Having read that,

  <VARIABLE> should be specified as a sequence of alphabetic
  characters and underscores.

seems good to me.  Apparently it's a widely used syntax and it looks familiar
to me, e.g., the git manpages and we could use it for existing documentation,
e.g.,

<RESULT-RECORD> ::=  [ <TOKEN> ] "^" <RESULT-CLASS> ( "," <RESULT> )* <NL>

rather than the currently ad-hoc(?) metasyntax.


-- 
Nick                                           http://users.snap.net.nz/~nickrob