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syntactic sugar

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English

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Etymology

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Attributed to British computer scientist Peter Landin.

Pronunciation

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  • Audio (US):(file)

Noun

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syntactic sugar (uncountable)

  1. (programming) Additions to the syntax of a programming language that make code easier for humans to read or write, but that do not change the functionality or expressiveness of the language.
    Coordinate term: syntactic salt
    In fact, this is how lists are actually built, by consing all elements to the empty list, []. The commas-and-brackets notation is just syntactic sugar, a more pleasant way to write code. So [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] is exactly equivalent to 1:2:3:4:5:[]. WB

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