wsmith@uiucdcsb.CS.UIUC.EDU (04/01/86)
UPI Mahomet, Ill.: Months of research at the Illinois Institute for Theoretical Computer Science have developed a new object that will revolutionize programming and Computer Science. This new class of programming languages is known as the syntax-free language. Researchers have become frustrated with the problem of "Syntax error on line 173" and have vowed to eliminate this bane from Computer Science forever. Dr. John Valiant, the chief of the team at IITCS says, "We tried everything, insect repellants, pet bats, toads, exorcism and incantations to get rid of the nasty syntax error bug to no avail. Finally we hit upon the solution-- syntax-free languages. Without a syntax, there will be no syntax errors." The major breakthrough is expected to have ramifications for the on-going software crisis as well as greatly decrease the competitiveness of languages like COBOL, FORTRAN and RPG. A syntax-free language does not resemble other languages with limited syntax such as FORTH because FORTH is implemented with standard limited techniques unlike a syntax-free language. Briefly the technique used involves the use of irregular expressions to define the semantics of the syntax-free language. The language developed is then translated by a lexlax utility which makes the language more regular and comprensible to the current generation of computers. It is expected that in the next few of years, irregular hardware architectures will be able to execute the irregular expressions directly. It is not clear when this software development system will be publicly available because the documentation for the syntax-free language so far is only written in Celtic. Translators are invited to apply to IITCS for positions available immediately in the translation staff .