“M” For Language Definition in November 2009 CTP
In the November 2009 CTP of “Oslo”, we’ve got some new DSL features in “M”, three of which I couldn’t wait for the PDC to brag about.
Notice the following in this screenshot of Intellipad:
-
The use of an expression on the right-hand side to calculate the full name from the first and last name from the parsed input: Name => f + ” ” + l (“M” supports a rich expression syntax for a variety of data types).
-
The use of ToInteger32 to provide output data conversion of the Age token as different from the default of string (there’s one of these functions for each of the supported “M” data types).
-
The orange highlighted text in the left-hand pane shows a breakpoint and notice that Intellipad knows that “yours old.” is a single thing, so highlights the entire phrase. Also notice the “notification” pane on the far right to show what the data is that’s being parsed right now. This indicates that Intellipad is now in DSL debugging mode and lets you step through your input data and debug your language.
You’ll also notice richer error information in the Error List at the bottom of the Intellipad window, but that I could’ve waited to tell you about. : )
All of these “M” features and more can be yours for the low low price of absolutely nothing in the latest CTP of “Oslo”, which you can download on November 17th, the first day of the PDC.