Re: Emacs contributions, C and Lisp

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > In a modern IDE, you can complete anything -- struct members or
  > object member variables/functions, type names, etc., etc., and you
  > need what are essentially compiler data structures to get that stuff,
  > and you need the AST to understand the context in which you're
  > requesting the completion.

I am not convinced this requires the entire AST.
I think it could be done with a lot less.

It certainly can be done with less.  For instance, if the code says

  foo.x + bar.y

or

  foo.x - bar.y

it makes no difference for completion what that operator is.  Clearly
there is information from the AST that need not be included in order
to fully support completion.

I think you propose "entire AST" because it is conceptually satisfying
to you, not because all the data in the AST are necessary.

What data ARE necessary?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call.