From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 12992 invoked by alias); 25 Sep 2009 12:34:30 -0000 Received: (qmail 12983 invoked by uid 22791); 25 Sep 2009 12:34:28 -0000 X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=-2.1 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,J_CHICKENPOX_64,SPF_PASS X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from mx.southnet.co.nz (HELO viper.snap.net.nz) (202.37.101.20) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.43rc1) with ESMTP; Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:34:21 +0000 Received: from totara (242.29.255.123.dynamic.snap.net.nz [123.255.29.242]) by viper.snap.net.nz (Postfix) with ESMTP id 731443DA59E; Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:34:18 +1200 (NZST) Received: by totara (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 02A92C167; Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:34:15 +1200 (NZST) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=unknown Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <19132.47302.194071.325914@totara.tehura.co.nz> Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:34:00 -0000 To: Vladimir Prus Cc: gdb-patches@sources.redhat.com Subject: Re: [PATCH:doc] GDB/MI attribute names In-Reply-To: References: <19131.17428.428101.481874@totara.tehura.co.nz> <19132.41367.233102.480938@totara.tehura.co.nz> From: nickrob@snap.net.nz (Nick Roberts) X-IsSubscribed: yes Mailing-List: contact gdb-patches-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-patches-owner@sourceware.org X-SW-Source: 2009-09/txt/msg00788.txt.bz2 > > 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, 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., ::= [ ] "^" ( "," )* rather than the currently ad-hoc(?) metasyntax. -- Nick http://users.snap.net.nz/~nickrob