Computing Dictionary
syntactic sugar definition
Term coined by Peter Landin for additions to the syntax of a language which do not affect its expressiveness but make it "sweeter" for humans to use. Syntactic sugar gives the programmer an alternative way of coding that is more succinct or more like some familiar notation. It does not affect the expressiveness of the formalism (compare
chrome).
Syntactic sugar can be easily translated ("desugared") to produce a program in some simpler "core" syntax. E.g. C's "a[i]" notation is syntactic sugar for "*(a + i)". In a (curried) functional language, all operators are really functions and the use of
infix notation "x+y" is syntactic sugar for function application "(+) x y".
Alan Perlis once quipped, "Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon."
The variants "syntactic saccharin" and "syntactic syrup" are also recorded. These denote something even more gratuitous, in that they serve no purpose at all. Compare
candygrammar,
syntactic salt.
