Gorn language-naming language(ID:7495/)

Lanugage for naming languages, to permit multilanguage compilation 

Prefix language for specifying what language is to be used in a section of a multi-language program

Saul Gorn 1965

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References:
  • Gorn, Saul "Language-naming languages in prefix form" in Formal language description languages for computer programming, pp249-265 view details
  • Burke, H. H. review of Gorn 1965 view details Abstract: This paper is an exploration of the use of a prefix language for the purpose of specifying languages and their processors. The main motive seems to be to omit the use of parentheses to convey grouping in expressions. This is done by 1) attaching a number or weight to each character of the alphabet which in its most natural interpretation corresponds to the number of arguments expected by the function denoted by the character and by 2) permitting characters of one alphabet to be words of another. A word of a prefix language is defined to be either a character of weight zero or a character of weight n followed by n words. The recognizers and parsers of such a language are particularly simple, but there is a difficulty produced by tying the interpretation of application of function to arguments too closely to this syntax. The difficulty arises from functional arguments. When a character appears in operator position, it must have a weight corresponding to the number of its arguments; but when it occurs as an operand it must have zero weight. This can be overcome by attaching a weight of zero to all characters and by introducing a character corresponding to the operation of application.
    The paper proceeds by listing a number of alphabets and basic processors for them, most of which are more fully described in the author's previous papers. A suggestion is made that a prefix language be used both for programming purposes and for specifying programming language processors. I find a prefix language without devices for grouping difficult to use for practical programming purposes. It may be more valuable for use in exploring the foundations of programming. It is disappointing that this elaborate structure of prefix languages should have a number of unexplained flowcharts which appear at the end of this paper as their foundation; on the contrary, one would expect that flowcharts should rest on the foundation of prefix languages.

          in ACM Computing Reviews 7(05) September-October 1966 view details