Talk:Idiomatically determine all the characters that can be used for symbols: Difference between revisions

 

: I would've thought you'd get a clue from the first example entered (REXX).   I didn't want to confuse symbols with characters (or a group of characters) within a computer program.   If every character is a symbol, then we could just use the word ''character''.   As I meant/used/inferred it, symbols can be names of something, mostly used for names of programs/functions/subroutines/routines (another name would be entry points, specifically, the names of entry points), variable names (or structures), names (maybe called ''labels'' or ''events'') of things that can be signaled/invoked (or trapped), etc.   More generally, names that computer programmers can choose, as opposed to names of things that the compiler writers (or the architects) have chosen.   I know that isn't specific enough to please most people, maybe not even some people; but I had to jump in somewhere.   It wasn't my intent to exclude any computer programming languages that didn't have all (or if any) of the classes/types of symbols, nor was it meant to be so defined that some computer programming languages would/might be excluded.   This is the main reason I tried to not define the word specifically so it might become exclusive (or start a definition war).   My background in computer programming is mostly old school (FORTRAN, PL/I, COBOL, BASIC, IBM mainframe assembler, REXX, etc) where symbols have a more traditional (and somewhat confined) usage and/or meaning and usually exclude things like operators, types of statements, and (action) verbs --- and there are others, of course.   I realized before I entered this Rosetta Code task, this would be fraught with the possibility of not adequately defining what a ''symbol'' is, but then, it wouldn't ever have been entered since there wasn't a definition where one-size-fits-all (computer programming languages).   As for defining what a symbol is, and if a computer programming language has other meanings for symbols that can be programmatically determined, then that can be shown/defined in the examples.   We could hash this out forever (trying to define what a symbol is in this context), but I feel there will never be a consensus on any one (specific) definition that would cover all computer programming languages, at least, on one definition that can't be agreed on without a long back and forth discussion.   However, if there is a term for what I envisioned, I'd like to know what it is.   If you could iron one out, give it a try (now that you know what I meant to ask for).   I don't want this to evolve into a detailed discussion on the grammatics of computer science terminology on symbolism or a debate on computer programming cultures. -- [[User:Gerard Schildberger|Gerard Schildberger]] ([[User talk:Gerard Schildberger|talk]]) 18:29, 21 March 2014 (UTC)