Jeff Houck <jho### [at] northrimnet> wrote:
> Personally, I like the SDL just the way it is... Simple, mostly 
> predictable and easy to use...

  ... very limited and very slow.

  Also, from core developement point of view, it's quite horrible.
For example, why do you think there's no eval() function in POV-Ray?
That is, a function which takes a string and evaluates this string
as if it was SDL (similar to how an #include "file" would do, but
with a string instead)?
  Answer: Because the parser is a mess, full of kludges, burdened with
backwards-compatibility. For example, #macros are handy and powerful...
too powerful for their own good. #macros are one of the major reasons
why there's no eval() function in POV-Ray.

  Adding new features to the parser is a real pain sometimes (I have
recent personal experience), mainly due to how the SDL works and is
parsed. For example, being able to insert a #declare almost anywhere
may feel handy, but is a nightmare to parse properly.
  One thing I recently tried to achieve was string concatenation using
the + operator (as an alternative to the concat function). In the end
it seems that this would be really, really difficult to implement in
the current parser due to how interpreting # commands (which can appear
almost everywhere) works.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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