[coined by Peter Landin]
n. Features added to a
language or other formalism to make it 'sweeter' for humans,
that 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 variant 'syntactic saccharine' is also recorded. This
denotes something even more gratuitous, in that syntactic sugar
serves a purpose (making something more acceptable to humans) but
syntactic saccharine serves no purpose at all.
