Is the declaration grammar definition of 'Parameter' correct?

[Ellery Newcomer]

On 06/13/2010 03:15 PM, BCS wrote:
> Right now we have two semi-official definitions of the D grammar; the
> docs (that are wrong) and the parser source (that is effectively
> unreadable by most people). I would like to propose a solution to this
> problem: eliminate one of them and derive it from the other.


In the past, Walter has expressed a dislike of parser generators. I 
doubt you can get him to change his mind on that one, especially since 
most parser generators won't be able to handle D anyways, and I doubt 
any of them will be able to handle D efficiently (what are they called - 
GLR parser generators? Don't know about these).

As far as analysing parse.c goes, how much effort is it going to take to 
figure out what

while(1)
   switch(token.value){
     case x:
       parseThis();
       continue;
     case y:
       parseThat();
       break;
   }
   break;
}

should look like in a grammar?

Counterproposal: why don't we just fix the grammar?

>
> I know this will be hard to do but it can be done incrementally with
> each step making improvements over the last.
>
> The first thing to do is put all of the description of the grammar in
> the docs into one place. If the literal text of each production is
> replace with a macro reference then the definitions of these macros can
> be put into a single file and expanded everywhere.
> The incremental improvement here is that having the grammar in one place
> by it's self will make it easier to check.

I would very much like to see the entire grammar in one place. I can't 
tell you how obnoxious it is to search through the entire site to find 
one production

And as always, apologies for being a pessimist.