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Talk:Programming language specification

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by K.lee (talk | contribs) at 01:01, 6 June 2006 (→Test suites). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Test suites

I am not aware of any language that is defined purely in terms of the behavior required by a test suite. If you define a test suite as the set of all programs written in a language, then there are some languages that could be said to be defined in terms of the programs that currently exist. But I don't know of any language where a hand written test suite plays a strong part in the language definition (although Ada comes close; I have heard stories of how the language definition was changed to match that of the test suite). Derek farn 22:02, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Does this count? It is not part of the Ada Reference Manual, but in practice it plays a role in the social process of Ada programming and implementation not unlike that of a part of the language specification. k.lee 22:08, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think the Ada test suite started out as just that, a test suite. Over time it took on this new role. I suspect that the Ada people would argue until blue in the face that it was not true. Do you fancy reading through the Ada committee papers looking for the smoking gun? Derek farn 00:50, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Truthfully, I'm not that interested in whether Ada test suite is technically part of the capital-L Language Reference Manual or not. To me, a language specification (little-l) includes any artifacts that are self-consciously used by a language community to reach consensus on that language's meaning. This article should treat the subject of language specification broadly: the tools, process, and artifacts of language specification, not just the documents that are officially called "language specifications". It seems obvious to me that a test suite can, in principle, play some role in language specification, and so some discussion of test suites is in order. If you want to edit the text to say that in practice, (almost?) no language is officially defined via test suite, and maybe cut down the size of the test suite section, then WP:BB. k.lee 01:01, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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