Re: Parsing nested statements: was Re: gnubol: subsets

[RKRayhawk@aol.com]

Conditional Encounters of The Implicit Kind

At 
http://www.s390.ibm.com/bookmgr-cgi/bookmgr.cmd/BOOKS/IGYLR201/6%2e1%2e7%2e5?S
HELF=

you can find 

"6.1.7.5 Implicit Scope Terminators

"At the end of any sentence, an IMPLICIT SCOPE TERMINATOR is a separator 
period that terminates the scope of all previous statements not yet 
terminated. 

"An unterminated conditional statement cannot be contained by another 
statement. However, a scope terminator will be assumed just prior to the 
next phrase of the containing statement. 

"Note: Except for nesting conditional statements within IF statements, 
nested statements must be imperative statements, and must follow the 
rules for imperative statements. You should not nest conditional 
statements. "

So look real careful at the sentence: "However, a scope terminator will be 
assumed just prior to the next phrase of the containing statement. "

If you are not ready for it, it will do a number on your mind.  If you have 
already seen the light, it is obvious.  The conditional clauses have no 
ordinality.  Simple imperatives can be expressed in the interior without 
their own explicit scope terminator as long as they don't hope to have a 
conditional clause or so of their own that needs to be scoped to the 
interior. That flexibility is accomplished by an 'assumed' scope terminator 
just prior to the conditional clause that belongs out at the outer arithmetic 
statement. Scouts honor!

Yet such an 'assumption' can not be committed until lookahead confirms that 
there is no explicit scope terminator on the interior, the absence or 
presence of which might be miles away. A bit of a Rubic's cude ain't it?!

This quote is not from the standard but from a field manual that depicts the 
code base we need to consider. All material at the site is proprietary.

More than any other GNU project, it is the code base that counts for this 
effort. The standard is the guide but we must remain committed to the owners 
of the code base.

Legacy code is real even if the ink is still wet. Crossing platforms is what 
the industry is turning into. COBOL is front and center. And in the center is 
quite possibly a mix of ideas.


Best Wishes
Bob Rayhawk
RKRayhawk@aol.com

P.S. When we are really ready we will talk about packed numbers, and 
convergence. That will be fun.




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