Understanding “values” is perhaps the most critical part of understanding programming. We are inundated with a variety of terms like “by value”, “by reference”, “member copying”, “binding”, “pointer”, “object reference”, “heap variable” […]
Error handling should be simple. It can become mired in complexity, but I don’t believe it has to be that way. If we stay focused on fundamentals, what seems like a difficult […]
Is there a difference between a “fault” and an “error” within a computer program? A number of people commented on my previous article suggesting this to be the case. I will try […]
The abort function is a remnant of old programming practices, and it pains me to see it in modern software. While it’s great that a program detects an error, calling abort is […]
Closures have been around a long time yet have experienced a resurgence in the last decade. They were first implemented in the functional language Scheme then later introduced to object-oriented programming in […]
How often does one need to write a custom language? Many projects often shun them, but I think domain specific languages are important. They offer unique features and make certain tasks easier. […]
Conditionals are a key construct in programming: from the simple if statement, to loops and switches, and even to dynamic mapping. The essence of program flow is defined by its conditions and […]
Sometimes the simplest of things have complex answers. In programming we like to think of simple data types, but in reality there aren’t any. While it is nice to consider things as […]
Parser generators, like ANTLR or Bison, seem like great tools. Yet when I have to write a parser I now tend to steer clear of them, resorting to writing one manually. When […]
![[+[a][*[b][c]]]](https://mortoray.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/syntax_tree_a.png?w=72&h=80&crop=1)
While working on Cloverleaf I came upon a problem of parsing custom operators. I would like to say that a language would allow custom infix operators, to be perfectly flexible and adaptable. […]
Beware the casual performance test, it will lie to you. It is simple to write something that gives you timings, but it is difficult to make those timings meaningful. A whole host […]
I thought a good way to start Cloverleaf would be to write a simple expression parser. In a language expressions are those collection of symbols which result in a particular value. This […]
Some languages hand us sharp knives and encourage us to play with them. Other languages put us in padded rooms and discourage us from doing anything at all. Though it may sound […]
Dispatching is one of those areas where I almost always rely on the preprocessor. I have done this in a variety of languages using a variety of techniques and have found nothing […]
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Musing Mortoray 