From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Fernando Nasser To: Jim Ingham Cc: gdb@sources.redhat.com Subject: Re: [5.1/mi] SYNTAX CHANGE? - List ``[ ]'' vs ``{ }'' Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 15:59:00 -0000 Message-id: <3AA6E5EC.5660BFF6@redhat.com> References: <200103080118.RAA04106@scv3.apple.com> X-SW-Source: 2001-03/msg00069.html I rest my case :-) Jim Ingham wrote: > > Andrew & Fernando, > > Okay, here are Rab's comments about the proposed change to the MI > interface (Rab Hagy (rhagy@apple.com) is the fellow responsible for the > Project Builder side of debugging for Apple's IDE.): > > > 1) The delimiters for a list should be different from those for a tuple. > > The output of MI is, basically, a property list. Property lists have > > been around for a long time and they have different delimiters for > > tuples and lists. > > > > The current situation, in which the same delimiters are used for both > > lists and tuples, results in stream of MI output which is difficult to > > inspect "by eye". The parser is a bit more complex than it needs to be > > because it has to handle the overloading of '{'. As a result, the data > > structures used to represent a VALUE is not a clean as they could be > > either. > > > > And, I mean this in the nicest way possible, this oversight sticks out > > like a sore thumb... when I wrote the special-cases in the parser to > > deal with this obvious error in the grammar, I wondered if MI was > > really up to snuff. > > > > 2) '[' and ']' are the correct delimiters > > Adding these characters to the grammar does not complicate the parsing > > of MI output. These are the obvious characters to be used as the > > delimiters for a list. > > > > 3) ``[bp="1",bp="2",bp="4"]'' is incorrect > > I don't think this example is allowed by the proposed grammar. It > > should be one of: > > bps=["1", "2", "4"] > > [{bp="1"}, {bp="2"}, {bp="4"}] > > > > -rab > > Jim > -- > Jim Ingham jingham@apple.com > Developer Tools - gdb > Apple Computer -- Fernando Nasser Red Hat Canada Ltd. E-Mail: fnasser@redhat.com 2323 Yonge Street, Suite #300 Toronto, Ontario M4P 2C9