Re: [Re: RPGILE V4.3 Gotcha]

[boldt@xxxxxxxxxx]

Jim wrote:
>I've done a bit in C++, although not too much as I've yet to get a compiler
>for it.  Whenever I get the king's ransom together I'll get the Microsoft
>compiler.

If I were you, I'd get that Linux system up and running
again and do my C++ programming there.  Free tools galore!

For quite a few years, I did little programming at home
since the tools were getting more and more expensive, the
tools had more substantial hardware requirements, and heck,
the tools just weren't fun to use anymore.  For me, Linux
has made programming fun again!


>Java I don't much care for, probably because I haven't found a decent
>compiler for it that I like.

Have you tried the Jikes compiler from IBM?  Also free.


>One of my pet projects is writing an English Language parser for an AI
>interface.  That is one of the reasons I was looking at the compiler
>book.  And there is a lot of theory out there in paper form, but nothing
>concrete (probably because no one's been able to write one that really
>works yet).  Maybe the full concept hasn't been achieved, yet, or maybe
>computers just aren't fast enough yet.

Oh boy!  That's quite the ambitious project!  No, compiler
theory isn't quite up to that task.  Natural language
depends way too much on the semantic meanings of words.  To
fully handle natural language, your system needs to understand
all the meanings, connotations, and nuances of all the words.

I'm sure there's work going on in some AI lab, but I have no
idea what the state of the art is.  Feed in "natural language
understanding" into Google, and see where that leads you.


>I am sure it is a lot harder to parse the EVAL statement, then it is to parse
>MULT, DIV, MOVE, etc...

Well, the whole framework that handles expressions is quite
substantial.  But now that all of that is in place, it is
actually much easier to add new built-in functions and
operators than it is to add new op-codes.

Cheers!  Hans

Hans Boldt, ILE RPG Development, IBM Toronto Lab, boldt@ca.ibm.com


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