Re: Elision, or: Nick rides again in jbonai

["Arthur W. Protin Jr." (GC-ACCURATE) <cbmvax!uunet!PICA.ARMY.MIL!protin>]

Folks,
    When Guy Steele said

^   The elidable terminators make the language unambiguous, but may often be
^                                              ^^ ????????
^Did you mean "ambiguous"?

I could not believe he could be so dense.  I am very thankful that he took
the time to clarify what he was saying,

	The terminators in question, namely those that happen to be
	elidable (that's a useful way for me to identify them to you),
	are required in the language to avoid ambiguity, though in
	practice they may be omitted in many places.

================
MORE IMPORTANTLY
================
    He is also very correct in saying that the grammar is incomplete
because it lacks a codification of the rules for eliding terminators.

    I doubt that many of will use the formal grammar to learn the
language but most of us that do use the grammar to analyse the language
will profit from a more complete grammar regardless of the number of
additional rules needed to make the grammar more complete.

    So thank you Guy Steele,
        and

    thank you all,
    Art Protin


Arthur Protin <protin@pica.army.mil>
These are my personal views and do not reflect those of my boss
or this installation.