From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,582dff0b3f065a52 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,bc1361a952ec75ca X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-08-17 00:33:34 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!headwall.stanford.edu!feeder.via.net!newshub2.rdc1.sfba.home.com!news.home.com!news1.rdc1.bc.home.com.POSTED!not-for-mail From: kaz@ashi.footprints.net (Kaz Kylheku) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++ Subject: Re: How Ada could have prevented the Red Code distributed denial of service attack. References: <3b690498.1111845720@news.worldonline.nl> <9kbu15$9bj@augusta.math.psu.edu> <9kbvsr$a02@augusta.math.psu.edu> <3B69DB35.4412459E@home.com> <9kp9n7$ivm$1@nh.pace.co.uk> <3B73337F.862F8D93@home.com> <9lb7hu$72h$1@norfair.nerim.net> <3B7C6977.3648F061@home.com> <3B7C79FA.89E62321@globetrotter.qc.ca> <3B7C9288.6CD8C288@home.com> Organization: Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous Reply-To: kaz@ashi.footprints.net User-Agent: slrn/0.9.6.3 (Linux) Message-ID: Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 07:33:33 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.68.85.82 X-Complaints-To: abuse@home.net X-Trace: news1.rdc1.bc.home.com 998033613 24.68.85.82 (Fri, 17 Aug 2001 00:33:33 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 00:33:33 PDT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:12034 comp.lang.c++:83353 Date: 2001-08-17T07:33:33+00:00 List-Id: In article <3B7C9288.6CD8C288@home.com>, Warren W. Gay VE3WWG wrote: >Kaz Kylheku wrote: >> In article <3B7C79FA.89E62321@globetrotter.qc.ca>, Chris Wolfe wrote: >> >> But if you insist on calling sheep as goats, and goats as sheep, >> >> then I give up. You win. >> > >> >On the basis of that tirade Natural, Positive, String and virtually >> >every other useful object provided by Ada is not the Ada language. If >> >it's required by the standard, it's part of the language. >> >> In fact, when you write your own procedures or functions, you are >> extending the language to create a new dialect specific to your program. > >Rubbish. You are _using_ the language to create a translation (compiled >output). The language needn't be compiled. What I'm doing is expressing that a computation is to take place. >When you can show the compiler's yacc grammer that specifically >addresses specific aspects of the STL (ie. specific to certain >class names), then you might have something. The C++ language is no defined by a yacc grammar. Its grammar does have non-terminal symbols which refer to previously declared entities, and which are not specific to certain class names. There is no doubt that a correctly written C++ program which uses the standard template library is grammatical. If that program contains #include , that is a well-formed preprocessing directive which refers to a standard-defined header. The grammar for that directive does not have ``map'' as a hard-coded terminal symbol in it. That symbol is part of the lexicon of the language. Similarly, the grammar does not have a specific production for map::iterator. >Until then, you are calling sheep goats. I'm not going to demand that you accept the definitions of the terms that I'm using. But those definitions are not confused. It is your definition that is confused: you are confusing ``grammar'' and ``language''. Only in the narrowest mathematical sense is a language the regular set generated by a grammar. In the terminology that I'm using, a programming language is a broader container which contains components like ``grammar'' and ``library''. To call the language a grammar is to mistake the part for the whole. You can use whatever definitions you want; I only wanted to advise you that the definitions you are using are not generally accepted by everyone, so you are likely to create confusion in future debates, and invite repeated corrections. With that I'm out; the last thing I'm interested in is a drawn out dispute about the semantics of some words!