Re: CVS Bison (2002-10-20) creates empty structures and initializers

[Akim Demaille]

>>>>> "Paul" == Paul Eggert <address@hidden> writes:

>> From: Akim Demaille <address@hidden> Date: 23 Oct 2002 09:14:27
>> +0200

>> | it's easier for non-M4 programmers to follow what's going on.
>> 
>> But people trying to copy-cat a CPP skeleton for a CPP-less
>> language will fail.

Paul> That's OK, and indeed expected; people using other programming
Paul> languages will expect to have to write skeletons in those
Paul> languages, and not in C.

Paul> Anyway, I was more worried about Bison users (i.e., ordinary
Paul> programmers trying to follow what a parser is doing by reading
Paul> skeletons and/or debugging the generated code) than about the
Paul> relatively few experts who are writing skeletons.

Honestly, I find that the parsers that we produce are much more
readable than they used to be.  Novice can read readable things, we
have much less cascades of #if to cope with the combinatoric explosion
of options.  Using M4, I do believe we produce better code (understand
``more legible''), and in most cases, more readable skeletons.

But undoubtedly, had we had a better M4, we could do even better :(
It seems that stealing some of M5 ideas to put into M4 would be a
great win.  Not only for clarity, but I tend to think that for speed
too.