about Octave's syntax

[Sergei Steshenko]

--- On Thu, 7/2/09, Jaroslav Hajek <highegg at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Jaroslav Hajek <highegg at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: about Octave's syntax
> To: "Sergei Steshenko" <sergstesh at yahoo.com>
> Cc: "Søren Hauberg" <soren at hauberg.org>, "Eduardo Alejandro Cuesta Llanes" <eacuesta at estudiantes.uci.cu>, help-octave at octave.org
> Date: Thursday, July 2, 2009, 2:20 AM
> 2009/7/2 Sergei Steshenko <sergstesh at yahoo.com>:
[snip]

> > Presence of separate from code language spec/grammar
> allows (in many cases)
> > to write a parser under any license.
> >
> 
> So what? The same is true if you write the parser using
> Octave source
> code as a reference. What you can't do is to copy (or you
> must use
> GPL), but merely learning how the code works and what it
> does is your
> essential freedom, one that GPL protects, and exercising
> this freedom
> does imply any obligations for you.
> 
> regards
> 
> -- 
> RNDr. Jaroslav Hajek
> computing expert & GNU Octave developer
> Aeronautical Research and Test Institute (VZLU)
> Prague, Czech Republic
> url: www.highegg.matfyz.cz
> 

As I heard from people in in corporate environment, lawyers prefer to be
on the safe side and often demand clean room implementation.

Which may mean that a group of people studies the code and writes the spec,
and _another_ group of people writes an alternative implementation based
on the spec.

...

Anyway, if 'octave' formally defined grammar is ever to be born,
this:

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~smcpeak/elkhound/sources/elkhound/index.html

might be a handy tool to convert it into C++.

Regards,
  Sergei.