syntax improvement, new operators

onitunes er... at atlasocean.com
Thu Feb 8 21:59:09 UTC 2007


I want to add that a major motivation for the new actions is to
eliminate bugs caused by a misunderstanding of the Optional and Kleene
Star operators. Without the new actions, it's difficult to write
properly write code with Ragel that handles resource acquisition and
release. You *can* do it without the new operators by setting and
clearing external state flags, but that is error prone and requires
complex explanations of why it is necessary in the first place. Since
Ragel already has the knowledge to execute the new actions at the
correct places, I believe Ragel should provide the actions to users
directly instead of forcing us to maintain our own state flags
externally.

Best, Erich Ocean



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