A Simple, Natural Notation for Applicative Languages

摘要

Many non-specialists are intimidated by the mathematical appearance of most applicative, functional, and very-high-level languages. This report presents a simple notation that has an unintimidating, natural-language appearance and that can be adapted to a variety of languages. The paper demonstrates its use as an alternate syntax for LISP, PROLOG, Backus' FP, relational programming, and relational database retrievals. The grammar's eight productions can be handled by a simple recursive-descent parser. (Author)