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Parsing is IMO of all the complaints you could make about C/++ rather bikesheddy. Parsing is a solved problem. Modern compilers can parse millions of LoC per se

Parsing is IMO of all the complaints you could make about C/++ rather bikesheddy. Parsing is a solved problem. Modern compilers can parse millions of LoC per second. And most of the specific parsing-related complaints (pointer dereference or multiplication?) about C/++ are also true of Rust. (Edit: Nope, brain fart on my part, see below). And, AFAIK, all C/++ parsing is well-defined, if counterintuitive in certain edge cases.

steveklabnik 10y ago
> most of the specific parsing-related complaints (pointer dereference or multiplication?) about C/++ are also true of Rust. This should not be true, and we fought hard to keep it that way. There's one spot of Rust's grammar that's context-sensitive, for something very rarely used, and other than that, it's all much simpler.
- smitherfield 10y ago
  You're right. AFAIK types and identifiers are always unambiguous in Rust. I was thinking visually (same operator) instead of in terms of specification and implementation. Shows me to make flippant comments from the toilet! My larger point is that there are plenty of very good reasons to criticize C/++, and parsing is a minor one since parsing is fast, and even if the creation of the AST isn't context-sensitive, verifying its correctness (is this identifier in scope?) still is. What is the context-sensitive spot in Rust's grammar?
  - steveklabnik 10y ago
    Fair enough :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13915595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13915595
  - wyldfire 10y ago
    > plenty of very good reasons to criticize C/++, and parsing is a minor one Ok, fair bit, it's a frustration for me but admittedly not as important as the other differences. I mention it because it's a wart in C's language design and I figured Rust's safety features are already well-known and heavily discussed. If I want to write a simple tool "ask this tree of .c files how often they use an identifier with name 'X' or type 'Y'", I have to find out the include paths, defines, all kinds of other "noise" just to find out what could be a relatively simple query of the source base.
    - Manishearth 10y ago
      This also means that autocomplete tools usually need to be taught how to build a project. YCM has this whole conf file where you specify the header locations and stuff and it's like rewriting half the makefile.

steveklabnik 10y ago

> most of the specific parsing-related complaints (pointer dereference or multiplication?) about C/++ are also true of Rust. This should not be true, and we fought hard to keep it that way. There's one spot of Rust's grammar that's context-sensitive, for something very rarely used, and other than that, it's all much simpler.

smitherfield 10y ago
You're right. AFAIK types and identifiers are always unambiguous in Rust. I was thinking visually (same operator) instead of in terms of specification and implementation. Shows me to make flippant comments from the toilet! My larger point is that there are plenty of very good reasons to criticize C/++, and parsing is a minor one since parsing is fast, and even if the creation of the AST isn't context-sensitive, verifying its correctness (is this identifier in scope?) still is. What is the context-sensitive spot in Rust's grammar?
- steveklabnik 10y ago
  Fair enough :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13915595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13915595
- wyldfire 10y ago
  > plenty of very good reasons to criticize C/++, and parsing is a minor one Ok, fair bit, it's a frustration for me but admittedly not as important as the other differences. I mention it because it's a wart in C's language design and I figured Rust's safety features are already well-known and heavily discussed. If I want to write a simple tool "ask this tree of .c files how often they use an identifier with name 'X' or type 'Y'", I have to find out the include paths, defines, all kinds of other "noise" just to find out what could be a relatively simple query of the source base.
  - Manishearth 10y ago
    This also means that autocomplete tools usually need to be taught how to build a project. YCM has this whole conf file where you specify the header locations and stuff and it's like rewriting half the makefile.