Questions

1. Some programming languages do not have any reserved words at all, but most popular mainstream languages have several dozen. What are the advantages and disadvantages of adding more reserved words to a language?
2. The lexical rules for literal constants are often the largest and most complex rules in a programming language's lexical specification. Give examples of how even something as simple as integer literals can become quite a challenge to the language implementer.
3. Semicolons are often used to either terminate statements or separate adjacent statements from each other. In many popular mainstream languages, the single most common syntax error is a missing semicolon. Describe one or more ways that semicolons can be made unnecessary in a programming language's syntax.
4. Many programming languages define a program as starting from a function named main(). Java is unusual in that although execution starts from main(), every class can have its own main...