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Re: The beauty and power of declarative syntaxes and declarati

• From: Jonas Mellin <jonas.mellin@h...>
• To: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@m...>
• Date: Mon, 02 Feb 2009 15:31:40 +0100

Costello, Roger L. wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> While reading a paper [1] by Dimitre Novatchev I gained a deeper insight and appreciation of the beauty and power of declarative syntaxes and declarative programming languages.
>
> Consider this XML:
>
>     <?xml version="1.0"?>
>     <aircraft>
>         <altitude units="feet">
>             12000
>         </altitude>
>     </aircraft>
>
> It is a declaration of an aircraft's altitude in feet.
>
> It is just a declaration. There are no moving parts, no "state" changes. It just declares what is.
>
> This is really nice. It's easy to understand and verify at a glance.
>
> XML is a declarative syntax.
>   
Hmm, I have heard of declarative languages in computer science, but not 
of declarative syntaxes. The only field I know of making a distinction 
between declarative and non-declarative syntax is relevance theory (if I 
remember it correctly). They use it to distinguish natural language 
sentences that states something (declares it) in contrast to sentences 
that does not (questions and utterances). Can anyone elaborate on this?

...SNIP...
> /Roger
>
> [1] Higher-Order Functional Programming with XSLT 2.0 and FXSL by Dimitre Novatchev
> http://www.idealliance.org/papers/extreme/proceedings/xslfo-pdf/2006/Novatchev01/EML2006Novatchev01.pdf
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>   


-- 
Carpe Diem!
===
Jonas Mellin, Assistant Professor in Computer Science
School of Humanities and Informatics, Building E-2
University of Skövde, P.O. Box 408, SE-541 28 Skövde, Sweden
Phone: +46 500 448321, Fax: +46 500 448399
Email: jonas.mellin@h..., URL: http://www.his.se/melj

• References:
  • The beauty and power of declarative syntaxes and declarativeprogramming languages
    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@m...>