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Re: Operator precedence [message #185013 is a reply to message #185008]

Sun, 23 February 2014 23:36

Richard Damon
Messages: 58
Registered: August 2011

Karma:

Member

On 2/23/14, 4:34 PM, Jerry Stuckle wrote:
> On 2/23/2014 2:42 PM, GS wrote:
>> This shows one of the major problems with PHP: there is no formal
>> language
>> definition, you have to go by examples in the help file to intuit what is
>> or is not valid. Where is the BNF definition of the language? There is
>> none
>> AFAICT.
>>
>
> Incorrect. There is a formal definition, as indicated in the doc at
> www.php.net.
>
Do you have a pointer to where "expression" is precisely defined (other
than reading code).

A statement in the documentation says:

PHP provides a full and powerful implementation of expressions, and
documenting it entirely goes beyond the scope of this manual.

Note that this is the "Language Reference" under "Expressions", if that
isn't the right spot to formally define the term (or at least place a
pointer to the formal definition), I am not sure what would be.

This shows that PHP is not a "formally defined language".

That doesn't mean it isn't powerful, or useful, or the right tool to use
in some places, but does say that it lacks some formal rigor.

The lack of formal rigor says that there are some questions which just
can't be answered by reading the language documentation.

The original question was a good example of this. the assignment
operator is described as having a precedence (fairly low) just like all
other operators, with some vague comments that it is done in a way that
certain things just work. In comments on looking at the code, the left
operand of assignment is a variable, and not an expression, effectively
giving assignment a very high precedence to the left, and a very low
precedence to the right (if the grammar even does end up being actually
describable precisely with precedence). To my knowledge, this detail is
NOT formally presented in the documentation.

This is somewhat the result of the type of language PHP is. PHP is
inherently a "single source" language, there is one implementation, and
that ultimately is the definition of what the language is (for that
version). This is as opposed to a language like C, where there is a
formal spec for the language, and many people can write their own
implementation, and that implementation can be judged by if it fully
meets the specification or not.

I am NOT proposing the PHP should stop and go to the effort to build a
standard of the level of C and the like, it isn't used as that type of
language. It might not hurt to "back-port" some of the details of
grammar as parsed, into an appendix.

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[Message index]

		Operator precedence By: Christoph Michael Bec on Sun, 23 February 2014 17:03
		Re: Operator precedence By: GS on Sun, 23 February 2014 19:42
		Re: Operator precedence By: Christoph Michael Bec on Sun, 23 February 2014 20:23
		Re: Operator precedence By: Jerry Stuckle on Sun, 23 February 2014 21:34
		Re: Operator precedence By: Richard Damon on Sun, 23 February 2014 23:36
		Re: Operator precedence By: Jerry Stuckle on Mon, 24 February 2014 02:09
		Re: Operator precedence By: Ben Bacarisse on Mon, 24 February 2014 04:49
		Re: Operator precedence By: Thomas 'PointedEars' on Mon, 24 February 2014 11:56
		Re: Operator precedence By: Christoph Michael Bec on Mon, 24 February 2014 16:38
		Re: Operator precedence By: Ben Bacarisse on Mon, 24 February 2014 21:25
		Re: Operator precedence By: Thomas 'PointedEars' on Mon, 24 February 2014 23:38
		Re: Operator precedence By: Christoph Michael Bec on Tue, 25 February 2014 00:07
		Re: Operator precedence By: Thomas 'PointedEars' on Tue, 25 February 2014 00:37
		Re: Operator precedence By: Christoph Michael Bec on Tue, 25 February 2014 01:12
		Re: Operator precedence By: Thomas 'PointedEars' on Tue, 25 February 2014 02:29
		Re: Operator precedence By: Christoph Michael Bec on Tue, 25 February 2014 18:41
		Re: Operator precedence By: Thomas 'PointedEars' on Tue, 25 February 2014 18:55
		Re: Operator precedence By: Christoph Michael Bec on Tue, 25 February 2014 20:36
		Re: Operator precedence By: Ben Bacarisse on Tue, 25 February 2014 03:08
		Re: Operator precedence By: Thomas 'PointedEars' on Tue, 25 February 2014 03:17
		Re: Operator precedence By: Ben Bacarisse on Tue, 25 February 2014 04:45
		Re: Operator precedence By: GS on Tue, 25 February 2014 21:45
		Re: Operator precedence By: Jerry Stuckle on Mon, 24 February 2014 12:00
		Re: Operator precedence By: Christoph Michael Bec on Mon, 24 February 2014 17:11
		Re: Operator precedence By: Jerry Stuckle on Mon, 24 February 2014 19:27
		Re: Operator precedence By: Christoph Michael Bec on Tue, 25 February 2014 00:25
		Re: Operator precedence By: Jerry Stuckle on Tue, 25 February 2014 01:40
		Re: Operator precedence By: Ben Bacarisse on Mon, 24 February 2014 21:23
		Re: Operator precedence By: Jerry Stuckle on Mon, 24 February 2014 21:45
		Re: Operator precedence By: Ben Bacarisse on Tue, 25 February 2014 04:32
		Re: Operator precedence By: Jerry Stuckle on Tue, 25 February 2014 04:47
		Re: Operator precedence By: Ben Bacarisse on Tue, 25 February 2014 16:56
		Re: Operator precedence By: Jerry Stuckle on Tue, 25 February 2014 18:59
		Re: Operator precedence By: Christoph Michael Bec on Tue, 25 February 2014 19:19
		Re: Operator precedence By: Thomas 'PointedEars' on Tue, 25 February 2014 19:43
		Re: Operator precedence By: Jerry Stuckle on Tue, 25 February 2014 21:02
		Re: Operator precedence By: Jerry Stuckle on Tue, 25 February 2014 21:01
		Object constructors/destructors (was: Operator precedence) By: Christoph Michael Bec on Tue, 25 February 2014 21:19
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Jerry Stuckle on Tue, 25 February 2014 21:32
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Christoph Michael Bec on Tue, 25 February 2014 21:55
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Jerry Stuckle on Tue, 25 February 2014 22:01
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Adam Harvey on Tue, 25 February 2014 23:22
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Jerry Stuckle on Wed, 26 February 2014 02:10
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Christoph Michael Bec on Wed, 26 February 2014 20:10
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Jerry Stuckle on Wed, 26 February 2014 21:01
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Christoph Michael Bec on Wed, 26 February 2014 21:59
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Jerry Stuckle on Wed, 26 February 2014 22:19
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Christoph Michael Bec on Wed, 26 February 2014 22:39
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Jerry Stuckle on Thu, 27 February 2014 03:30
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Christoph Michael Bec on Thu, 27 February 2014 17:28
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Jerry Stuckle on Thu, 27 February 2014 21:09
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Christoph Michael Bec on Fri, 28 February 2014 13:52
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Jerry Stuckle on Fri, 28 February 2014 14:08
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Christoph Michael Bec on Fri, 28 February 2014 15:52
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Jerry Stuckle on Fri, 28 February 2014 16:03
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Thomas 'PointedEars' on Thu, 27 February 2014 00:00
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Jerry Stuckle on Thu, 27 February 2014 03:39
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Thomas 'PointedEars' on Thu, 27 February 2014 17:29
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Jerry Stuckle on Thu, 27 February 2014 21:14
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Christoph Michael Bec on Tue, 25 February 2014 23:18
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Jerry Stuckle on Wed, 26 February 2014 02:08
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Richard Damon on Wed, 26 February 2014 12:50
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Jerry Stuckle on Wed, 26 February 2014 13:44
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Richard Damon on Thu, 27 February 2014 04:49
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Jerry Stuckle on Thu, 27 February 2014 13:25
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Richard Damon on Sat, 01 March 2014 17:56
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Jerry Stuckle on Sat, 01 March 2014 19:22
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Richard Damon on Sun, 02 March 2014 19:28
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Jerry Stuckle on Sun, 02 March 2014 20:42
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Richard Damon on Sun, 02 March 2014 22:14
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Jerry Stuckle on Sun, 02 March 2014 22:48
		Re: Object constructors/destructors By: Tim Streater on Sun, 02 March 2014 23:05
		Re: Operator precedence By: Ben Bacarisse on Tue, 25 February 2014 21:08
		Re: Operator precedence By: Christoph Michael Bec on Tue, 25 February 2014 21:29
		Re: Operator precedence By: Ben Bacarisse on Tue, 25 February 2014 23:15
		Re: Operator precedence By: Richard Damon on Tue, 25 February 2014 03:41
		Re: Operator precedence By: Jerry Stuckle on Tue, 25 February 2014 04:59
		Re: Operator precedence By: Richard Damon on Sat, 01 March 2014 18:39
		Re: Operator precedence By: Jerry Stuckle on Sat, 01 March 2014 19:29
		Re: Operator precedence By: Richard Damon on Sun, 02 March 2014 20:22
		Re: Operator precedence By: Jerry Stuckle on Sun, 02 March 2014 20:49
		Re: Operator precedence By: Christoph Michael Bec on Tue, 25 February 2014 18:15
		Re: Operator precedence By: Ben Bacarisse on Sun, 23 February 2014 20:56
		Re: Operator precedence By: Christoph Michael Bec on Mon, 24 February 2014 13:28

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