Desain, P. (1991). Parsing the parser. A case study in programming style. Computers in Music Research, 1(2), 39-90.

Abstract

The value of the computational approach in the cognitive sciences lays both in the need to formalize theories such that they can be implemented as computer programs and in the subsequent ease of experimenting with these programs. In this paper I hope to show that, the cleaner a programming style is used, the more these benefits will be present. As an example, the musical parser designed and described by Longuet-Higgins is re-implemented in a clean functional programming style in LISP. This yields a, so called, micro version that makes the theoretical issues that the original program was supposed to illustrate, stand out much more clearly.

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