On 2013-10-16, Mark Janssen <dreamingforw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 2:46 PM, Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid>
> wrote:
>> On 2013-10-15, Mark Janssen <dreamingforw...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Yeah, well 40 years ago they didn't have parsers.
>>
>> That seems an odd thing to say. People were assembling and compiling
>> computer programs long before 1973.
>
> I'm using the word "parser" in the sense of a stand-alone application
> that became useful with the growing open source culture that was
> developing in the 70's. Prior to that you have punch cards where
> there's no meaningful definition of "parsing" because there are no
> tokens.
What do you mean "there are no tokens?". Pascal/Fortran/COBOL on
a deck of punched cards is parsed/compiled the same as it is in a file
on a hard drive.
> Would you say you were "parsing" on an old digital machine
> where you input programs with binary switches?
No, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about compiling
Fortran or PL/1 or whatnot.
> But after the advent of the dumb terminal, parsers started evolving,
> and that was the early 70's. I might be a year or two off, but I only
> gave one significant digit there. ;^)
I don't understand what dumb terminals have to do with it.
--
Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! I'm GLAD I
at remembered to XEROX all
gmail.com my UNDERSHIRTS!!
--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
