Cobra Forums

Hi Chuck, et al. It's great to see some independent work being done on languages. We can't leave everything up to the big guys.

My question is concerning what I call syntax customization, but it may have a more proper name.

One of the things I loved about C++ was coming up with libraries and tools that really extended the language in ways that were not originally intended, by use of especially operator overloading and macros. Sadly, when I moved to C# I was quite disappointed at the limitations put on operator overloading, as things like dot could not be overloaded.

I am just curious to what degree you envision Cobra to be customizable by end developers (i.e. without writing "language extensions" or some such).

Thanks,
Logan

I'm sorry to disappoint, but those are far down the list of future enhancements. Even ordinary operator overloading, which I definitely want, is a low priority. Given how important this is to you, I suggest you investigate EasyExtend and Boo. While Boo has macros, I believe that EasyExtend lets you actually alter the grammar (and I don't mean with new keywords/names, I mean adding new syntactical forms).

I think EasyExtend is interesting, but from my perspective, it's too experimental for Cobra at this time.

I understand you have priorities and certainly more important things to worry about at this point; I was just curious as to your plans. Thanks for the reply and I will keep an eye on the project.

Best of luck.

Logan