Who Says C is Simple?

Re:Who Says C is Simple? by TheCoelacanth on Wednesday July 17, 2013 @03:30PM (#6059710)

Compared to other languages, 179 pages for the full specification is pretty small. Java and C sharp have that more than three that size. C++ is roughly five times as large. If you're a fan of functional languages, Haskell is almost twice as large. Even Scheme, an extremely simple language, is only about 30 pages shorter.

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Re:Who Says C is Simple? by gnuvince on Wednesday July 17, 2013 @05:24PM (#6060282)

The book "The Definition of Standard ML" is ~150 pages for a language that is simple (IMO) and rich. Bonus, the definition is not written in prose, but with typing rules and operational semantics.

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Re:Who Says C is Simple? by jlgreco on Wednesday July 17, 2013 @07:48PM (#6060774)

> Bonus, the definition is not written in prose, but with typing rules and operational semantics.

While that is certainly nice, I suspect it makes it hard to really compare based on just pagecount. I doubt prose and such a formal definition like that are equally dense.

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Re:Who Says C is Simple? by gnuvince on Wednesday July 17, 2013 @10:08PM (#6061353)

Agreed. From what I've read [1], the syntax rules and semantic rules take up about 40 pages with the rest of the book being "introduction, exposition, core material, appendices and index".

[1] http://mythryl.org/my-Mythryl_is_not_just_a_bag_of_features_... (go to the middle of the page or search for "pages")

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Re:Who Says C is Simple? by Aqwis on Wednesday July 17, 2013 @06:45PM (#6060531)

The Python Language Reference is only 100 or so pages. I'm not sure how different the PLR is from a "real" spec, however.

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