[Kaffe] ease of use patch.

Alexandre Oliva oliva at dcc.unicamp.br
Wed Feb 24 07:17:24 PST 1999


On Feb 24, 1999, Alex Blewitt <Alex.Blewitt at ioshq.com> wrote:

>> It makes the java grammar more complex.
>> 
>> It would require extensive use of lexical states to allow keywords in
>> every location where it's unambiguous.
>> 
>> In general, language designers make these compromises, which don't harm
>> the programmer much, in order to make compilers easier to write and debug,
>> and faster in operation.

> As an add-on to this argument, the Java Language Specification dictates
> that you can't use any keywords (including int, private, while etc.) as
> variable names. So in the hope of having a portable tool, following the
> JLS not only makes the compiler easier to write, but also follows the
> spirit of the specification.

`java' is not a keyword, `class' is.  Nevertheless, this is all
irrelevant: the question is whether `class' and `java' are valid class 
names in terms of bytecode, not in terms of Java source.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~oliva aoliva@{acm.org,computer.org}
oliva@{dcc.unicamp.br,gnu.org,egcs.cygnus.com,samba.org}
Instituto de Computação, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, SP, Brasil



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