Re: Emacs contributions, C and Lisp

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>]

David Kastrup writes:

 > Really, I addressed this _exhaustively_ in

Hardly.  You have a hypothetical data structure containing an
unspecified set of information much of which is known to be available
in the AST, and unsubstantiated claims that "most" of the AST
information isn't needed.  For example:

 > But a full syntax tree is not required.  I repeat:
 > 
 >     [...] so the basic question that likely needs solving is "given the
 >     following source location and the following identifier, what data
 >     structures and definitions does it refer to".  Resolving identifiers
 >     based on source location efficiently will require suitable data
 >     structures, and any daemon answering questions accordingly will have
 >     to get raw data for building them.

"Likely."  "Suitable."  "Get raw data."  In other words, you have no
idea whether a full syntax tree is required or not.  All you know is
that if and when you get a spec for the data and a design for the
daemon, the rest will be a SMOP.  Thanks!  But, well, I already knew
that, that's just how programming works.

 > At any rate, this is hypothetical, while it would appear that
 > -fdump-xref isn't.  There seems to be little point in fighting a lot
 > over it without actually looking what -fdump-xref actually does.

OK.