[m-dev.] for review: rename the lexer and parser modules

[Fergus Henderson]

On 22-Aug-2000, Zoltan Somogyi <zs at cs.mu.OZ.AU> wrote:
> Ralph Becket's bug report is about the fourth problem I can remember being
> caused by the fact that we effectively don't allow people to call their modules
> "lexer" or "parser", both of which are natural names. I think it better to fix
> this problem now, without waiting for submodules to be used in the library.
> 
> The diff is entirely boring, having been produced mostly by global replace
> commands, and does not need review; what may need review is the idea
> of the rename. The only downside I can see is that looking up the CVS histories
> of the two affected modules will be somewhat harder. Any other opinions?

The other downside is that this change would break backwards
compatibility.  The "lexer" and "parser" modules are publically
accessible parts of the interface to the Mercury standard library,
documented in the library reference manual.

Personally I don't think this change is worthwhile.
However, if you really want to push it then I won't argue too hard.

I think it would be much more useful to improve the error message that
people get when the problem occurs (e.g. by adding support to
util/mdemangle.c, similar to the stuff that we already have for
`MR_grade_*' and `MR_runtime_grade').

-- 
Fergus Henderson <fjh at cs.mu.oz.au>  |  "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>  |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
PGP: finger fjh at 128.250.37.3        |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.
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