F08) Can <> be used instead of <>?
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This article is from the FAQ, by with numerous contributions by others.
F08) Can <> be used instead of <>?
The fragment system has a pragmatic treatment of the syntactic categories
<<AttributeDecl>> and <<Attributes>>. In general one may want to leave slots
in a delaration list for inserting declarations as in:
(# a: @integer;
<<SLOT lib1: attributes>>;
b: ^ text;
<<SLOT lib2: attributes>>;
c: (# ... #)
#)
It is, however, not possible to generate the above form from the BETA
grammar, since the nonterminal <attributes> cannot generate itself. It is
possible to make a grammar that can do this, but such a grammar is very
likely to be ambiguous. The following fragment can, however, be generated
from the grammar:
(# a: @integer;
<<SLOT lib1: attributeDecl>>;
b: ^ text;
<<SLOT lib2: attributeDecl>>;
c: (# ... #)
#)
This will, however, only allow one fragment-form to be inserted in a each
library slot. To handle this, the fragment system allows a fragment form of
category <attributes> to be inserted for an <attributeDecl>. This aliasing
between <attributeDecl> and <attributes> is handled by the alias mechanism
for the BOBS parser used by the meta programming system. See
$(BETALIB)/bobs/vx.y/bobs.bet, nontAlias. The alias mechanism also makes it
possible to use <descriptor> as a shorthand for <objectDescriptor>. The use
of syntac alias's is pragmatic and does not strictly follow the principles
of the fragment system, but it is considered a minor but practical
mechanism.
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