Re: Command Languages Versus Programming Languages

On 29.03.2024 21:59, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Fri, 29 Mar 2024 10:37:22 +0100, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
 

Program text is initially text.[*] During parsing (either in
an interpreted or in a compiled language) you split the text
in tokens.

 
And then, how do you interpret the tokens?

In an interpreter the tokens are interpreted, in a compiler
they are subject to the parsing. (But you know that I'm sure.)

What I was saying is that there's initially literal program text
that is transformed to tokens in the lexical analysis, and then
further processed.

It was a reply on your original statement which was:

In a shell language, everything you type is assumed to be a
literal string, unless you use special substitution sequences.

In a shell language, you have
the assumption that “everything is literal text until indicated
otherwise”;

Who is that "you"? (Not me, for sure.) And where did you get that
from?

in a programming language, you have the assumption that
“everything is a program construct until indicated otherwise”.

So what is  'for i in a ; do ... ; done'  then in your world?

This is one of many basic shell constructs that I use in shell
programming (not "shell scripting") regularly.

Janis