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From: lord@x1.cygnus.com (Tom Lord)
Subject: Re: GNU Extension Language Plans
In-Reply-To: peter@nmti.com's message of Mon, 24 Oct 1994 22:38:35 GMT
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	Peter da Silva writes:

	I'm sorry, you've lost me. Either the extension language the user's
	interested in is built into the executable, in which case they all
	have to be, or it's got to be execed to convert the user's key macro
	string into the implementation language, which gives you too much
	of a performance hit, or you expose the underlying mechanics of the
	implementation language to the user, which is what I thought you were
	trying to avoid. What's the fourth alternative?

The ``fourth alternative'' is this: the parser and translator for a
user's favorite syntax is loaded into the running program on demand.
Thus, it is as easy to use as if built-in, but without the associated
costs of building in all languages.

Syntaxes other than Scheme are just ordinary extensions.

-t
--
----

If you would like to volunteer to help with the GNU extension language
project, please write to lord@gnu.ai.mit.edu.
