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One of the best representations of the 'simpleness' is the way you can draw it in a graphical loop diagram as they do on the json.org site. When you can make y
by oneplane 6y ago
One of the best representations of the 'simpleness' is the way you can draw it in a graphical loop diagram as they do on the json.org site.
When you can make your 'format' in to a not-too-big diagram like that it makes it far easier for anyone interested to 'get it' and encompass the whole thing in their mind to work with.
- koenigdavidmj 6y agoSQLite is the place that (to my knowledge) was the first to do these "railroad diagrams". Here are all of theirs (though they're also available inside the documentation): https://sqlite.org/syntaxdiagrams.html https://sqlite.org/syntaxdiagrams.html
- heinrich5991 6y agoDefinitely not the first, I see that the first release of SQLite was 2000, and I found these railroad diagrams in old Pascal programming books of my father.
- 1wd 6y agoFor example Turbo Pascal included a Language Guide book that documented the entire Object Pascal language with railroad diagrams: https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_borlandturVersion7.0LanguageGuide1992_10480217/page/n43/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_borlandturVersion7.0La...
- rbonvall 6y agoAs far as I know, they were originally introduced by Niklaus Wirth to describe Pascal's syntax. See the last pages in this manual from 1973: https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/bitstream/handle/20.500.11850/68910/eth-3059-01.pdf https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/bitstream/handle/20....
- jhrwalter 6y agoThey even go back to Algol 68: http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/book/Lindsey_van_der_Meulen-IItA68-Revised-SyntaxOnly.pdf http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/book/Lind...
- hans_castorp 6y agoOracle had those always (even back when only printed manual were available)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]