day@grand.UUCP (Dave Yost) (11/06/88)
Does anyone know the origin of the term "syntactic sugar"? --dave yost
gvcormack@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Gordon V. Cormack) (11/07/88)
In article <444@grand.UUCP>, day@grand.UUCP (Dave Yost) writes: > > Does anyone know the origin of the term "syntactic sugar"? > > --dave yost Landin "The next 700 programming languages" CACM 1964 -- Gordon V. Cormack CS Dept, University of Waterloo, Canada N2L 3G1 gvcormack@waterloo { .CSNET or .CDN or .EDU } gvcormack@uwaterloo.CA gvcormack@water { UUCP or BITNET }
elg@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Green) (11/07/88)
in article <444@grand.UUCP>, day@grand.UUCP (Dave Yost) says: > Does anyone know the origin of the term "syntactic sugar"? Alan Perlis once noted that "syntactic sugar leads to cancer of the semicolon".... maybe that's a start? -- Eric Lee Green ..!{ames,decwrl,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509
hjb@otter.hple.hp.com (Harry Barman) (11/07/88)
I first saw the term used in the CLU reference manual. The manual was first published as an MIT Tech report (1978?). (p 43 in the Springer Verlag version). Cheers, Harry
kers@otter.hple.hp.com (Christopher Dollin) (11/08/88)
Harry said: | I first saw the term used in the CLU reference manual. The manual was first | published as an MIT Tech report (1978?). (p 43 in the Springer Verlag version). When I was at Oxford (1976-1979) I was told that the late Christopher Strachey had had a student who, after some unpleasant experiences with some programming language (or tool) had complained of "syntactic alum", by analogy. This suggests that the term predates 1976 at least. Here's my *completely unsupported guess* (tm) for the originator: Peter Landin. Regards, Kers.
skh@hpclskh.HP.COM (11/08/88)
Re: origin of "syntactic sugar"
As I recall, the term was made popular by Frank DeRemer. Try one of the
following sources:
Practical Translators for LR(k) languages, Ph.D. Thesis, Dept. of E.E.,
MIT (1969)
Simple LR(k) grammars, CACM 14(7), pp. 453-460, July 1971
If DeRemer did not invent the term, its origin can probably be found from there.
Note that these are among the earliest works on usable LR parsing.
Stewart Hill
skh%hpclskh@hplabs.hp.comlang@zeta.PRC.Unisys.COM (Francois-Michel Lang) (11/08/88)
In article <444@grand.UUCP> day@grand.UUCP (Dave Yost) writes: > >Does anyone know the origin of the term "syntactic sugar"? > > --dave yost Abelson & Sussman, in "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs", attribute the term "syntactic sugar" to Peter Landin. The reference (in my copy) is in a footnote on page 10. That footnote also quotes Alan Perlis: "Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon". ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Francois-Michel Lang Paoli Research Center, Unisys Corporation lang@prc.unisys.com (215) 648-7256 Dept of Comp & Info Science, U of PA lang@cis.upenn.edu (215) 898-9511