[spec] Phases of translation

[Basile B.]

On Sunday, 19 May 2019 at 16:52:10 UTC, Dibyendu Majumdar wrote:
> On Sunday, 19 May 2019 at 16:41:22 UTC, Max Haughton wrote:
>> Only use the code to work out what the current behaviour: The 
>> specification needs to be totally indpendant of the current 
>> implementations ('s ideology).
>
> Yes I understand that, but there may some some aspects implicit 
> in the implementation that should be made more explicit in the 
> specification. Maybe I need to come back to this topic after I 
> have done the other sections as I don't know what I don't know.
>
> Regards

The current compilation model of the front end is said to be 
"lazy" but a eager compilation would produce the same program 
without changing the semantics.
I think that this is for example what Max Haughton meant.

Saying that the semantic is multi pass due to some language 
feature such as string mixin, template mixin, mutually dependent 
declarations, (etc.) would be enough. It must be just clear that 
a single pass, following the lexical order top to bottom, would 
not work at all.