Subject: SC22 N2447 - SC22 Review of Two Vocabulary DISs

From: "william c. rinehuls" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 13:12:22 -0500 (EST)

____________________beginning of title page _______________________
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22
Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces
Secretariat:  U.S.A.  (ANSI)

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22
N2447

April 1997

TITLE:              SC22 Review of Two Vocabulary DISs

SOURCE:             Secretariat, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22

WORK ITEM:          N/A

STATUS:             N/A

CROSS REFERENCE:    SC22 N2387, N2388

DOCUMENT TYPE:      N/A

ACTION:             To SC22 Member Bodies and WG Conveners for
                    information.

Address reply to:
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 Secretariat
William C. Rinehuls
8457 Rushing Creek Court
Springfield, VA 22153 USA
Tel:  +1 (703) 912-9680
Fax:  +1 (703) 912-2973
email:  [email-masked]

___________________end of title page; beginning of text ________________

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22
Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces
Secretariat:  U.S.A.  (ANSI)

                                             April 5, 1997

Ms. Lisa Rajchel
Secretariat, ISO/IEC JTC 1
American National Standards Institute
11 West 42nd Street
New York, NY l0036

SUBJECT:  SC22 Review of Two Vocabulary DISs

Dear Lisa:

At the request of ISO/IEC JTC 1, SC22 conducted a review of the following  
DISs currently in the JTC 1 letter ballot stage:  DIS 2382-15 (Programming
Languages) and DIS  2382-7 (Types of Languages).

The SC22 review was hampered considerably but our inability to obtain pages
28-32 of DIS 2382-15. Those pages appear to contain taxonomy and examples
of data types for Ada, Pascal and COBOL.  Several attempts were made to
obtain these pages from the Secretariat of SC1 to no avail.  

Taking that into consideration, SC22 does offer one specific comment
dealing with the definition of "declarative language" in DIS 2382-7 and a
number of comments dealing with the definitions in DIS 2382-15.  These
comments is attached.

SC22 would still be interested in reviewing pages 23-32 of DIS 2382-15 if
those pages can be made available to us.

Sincerely

WILLIAM C. RINEHULS
Secretariat, JTC 1/SC22

Attachments

cc:  E. Blanchon, Secretariat SC1
     R. Follett, Chairman, SC22

______________________________________________________________________
Attachment A

                       SPECIFIC SC22 COMMENT ON DIS 2382-7

The definition of "declarative language" in DIS 2382-7 states:  "A  
programming language for expressing declarations".  That definition  is
very much at odds with existing usage.  

The Oxford Dictionary of Computing states:  "Since declarative languages  
are concerned with static rather than dynamic concepts (i.e., what rather
than how), they do not depend on any inherent notion of ordering and there
is no concept of flow of control and no assignment statement.  Ideally a  
program in a declarative language would consist solely of an unordered set
of equations, sufficient to characterize the desired result."

This notion is entirely different from the definition in DIS 2382-7.

The term "declarative" has already lost any real meaning it might have had
even as a buzzword of the 1980's.  It has been used to mean many different
things; however, the Oxford Dictionary statements above best characterize
the currently accepted definition of what a declarative language is.

Therefore, SC22 suggests that the definition either be deleted or revised  
to reflect its current usage as defined in the Oxford Dictionary.

________________________________________________________________________
Attachment B

                       Comments on ISO/IEC DIS 2382-15

15.01.09 disambiguation
     proposal
         Change the word "identifier" into "sequence of lexical
	 tokens".

     explanation
         The word disambiguation is applicable to more complex
         constructs. The programming language C contains
         disambiguation rules for the construct
         "((identifier)())". Pascal has rules for which "if" the
         "else" belongs in the following construction:
               if ... then ... else ... else ...

15.02.04 implicit declaration
     proposal
         Remove the word "data" from the definition.

     explanation
         This standard does not seem to differentiate between
         declaration and definition. In our view a definition is
         a creation of a new entity while possibly naming it. A
         declaration is the naming of an existing entity. The
         programming language C allows one to use an identifier
         in a certain context in an expression that also declares
         the identifier as referring to an existing function. To
         be exact: an old-style function returning an int.
         We have chosen not to propose a change from "data" into
         "data or instruction".  This would probably cause
         confusion. To allow for implicit declarations of non-
         data, we propose to delete the word "data".

15.02.10 declarative region

     proposed definition
         A portion of a program consisting of declarations.

     explanation
         In our view a declarative region is a portion of a
         program consisting solely of declarations. These
         declarations also determine scope and visibility.

         A different interpretation would be a region of a
         program that determines scope and visibility for
         declarations contained in that portion. The use of the
         word "other" in the original text is contradictory to
         our view of a declarative region. All declarations
         should be contained in the portion of the program that
         is referred to.

15.03.02 data object

     proposal
         Delete "and that is named ... program."

     explanation
         There are languages with unnamed data objects. So called
         pointers are used to refer to such objects. Pointers are
         not names and do not consist of characters from the
         program's character set.

15.04.06 logical type

     proposal
         Add  Boolean type to the heading.

     Explanation
         It seems a logical thing to do.

Index
         The index contains a reference to 15.1.11 for numerical
         constant and to 15.1.17 for string constant. 15.1.11 is
         a number used for a totally different definition and
         15.1.17 is not present in this DIS.
         We would like the standard to contain definitions for
         both concepts.
         We suggest that the index be checked for consistency.

______________________end of SC22 N2447 _____________________________