[bitc-dev] DISCUSS: To macro or not to macro?

[Jonathan S. Shapiro]

On Thu, 2008-07-17 at 09:24 -0700, Eric Rannaud wrote:
> BTW, this is another reason to keep the current syntax: it is much
> easier to build a static analyzer for BitC with a lispish syntax than
> with a C like syntax.

One cannot do any useful static analysis without full type information,
nor should one attempt it on a program whose symbols fail to resolve. At
that point you want to work on the AST, not the surface syntax, and the
argument for *any* particular surface syntax evaporates.

In response to the obvious objection, we've actually been careful to
ensure that our AST encodes enough information to re-emit the input
essentially unchanged (less comments). There are one or two bugs in this
at the moment, but we definitely view those as bugs.


shap