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

Nick Roberts
2009-09-25T12:34:30Z

> > 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