Re: What?

[Duane Rettig <address@hidden>]

Bruce Hoult <bruce@hoult.org> writes:

> In article <joswig-93EE80.14310512082002@news.fu-berlin.de>,
>  Rainer Joswig <joswig@lispmachine.de> wrote:
> 
> > In article <3D57A1E1.A5C24DD0@lucent.com>,
> >  Gabor Greif <ggreif@lucent.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > Well, I cannot help, but this very much reminds me of infix syntax :-)
> > > 
> > > The usage of punctuation always counted as the distinguishing feature of 
> > > infix syntax.
> > 
> > Hmm, why do you think Lisp's (or in prefix Dylan years ago) usage of
> > "prefix" syntax needs to be primitive? In reality prefix is more
> > complex and infix is not really infix.
> 
> I agree that Dylan's syntax is not *really* infix outside of the 
> mathematical binary operators, but that is the commonly-use term for it, 

If it is all that commonly used, I think that would be due to sloppiness,
on the part of both writer/speaker and reader/listener, as to _what_ is
really being described as infix.  For example, in Gabor Greif's statement
above, I read "counted as the distinguishing feature of infix syntax"
as "counted as the distinguishing feature of infix syntax for expressions",
whether or not it was meant that way.  In reality, Dylan is both infix
and prefix, similar to C/C++ which have all of prefix, infix, and postfix
(consider the postfix unary operators).

> in order to contrast it with e.g. Lisp or Forth syntax.

Lisp and Forth syntax are somewhat unique in that they tend to be
more consistent than other languages.  Neither are pure prefix (lisp)
nor pure postfix (forth) but that is also not a Bad Thing for them.
But perhaps it is this greater consistency which some interpret as
"more primitive".

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