Syntactic sugar

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The Jargon File Parts of this article are based on the Jargon File, v. 4.4.7, a public domain document of hacker jargon.

syntactic sugar

Usage: n. Derivation: Coined by Peter Landin See Also: chrome, candygrammar, syntactic salt

syntactic sugar: n.

[coined by Peter Landin] Features added to a language or other formalism to make it `sweeter' for humans, but which do not affect the expressiveness of the formalism (compare chrome). Used esp. when there is an obvious and trivial translation of the `sugar' feature into other constructs already present in the notation. C's a[i] notation is syntactic sugar for *(a + i). "Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon." -- Alan Perlis.

The variants syntactic saccharin and syntactic syrup are also recorded. These denote something even more gratuitous, in that syntactic sugar serves a purpose (making something more acceptable to humans), but syntactic saccharin or syrup serve no purpose at all. Compare candygrammar, syntactic salt.

Sources

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