Designed by Ben Werther and Damian Conway, SPECS has a LALR(1) parsable grammar, which means it is significantly easier to parse than standard C++ syntax, both for computers and for humans alike. Also unlike standard C++ syntax, in SPECS declarations do not look like uses. For example, the fundamental C++ allocation control function set_new_handler has this declaration in orthodox C++ syntax:
void (*set_new_handler(void (*)(void)))(void);which in SPECS becomes:
func set_new_handler : (^(void->void) -> ^(void->void));and using typedefs in C++:
typedef void (*new_handler)(void);
new_handler set_new_handler(new_handler);and in SPECS:
type new_handler : ^(void->void);
func set_new_handler : (new_handler -> new_handler);
Apart from the declaration syntax change, the template syntax is changed to use <> brackets to make the template keyword unnecessary, several overloaded syntax elements are separated for clarity, := is used for assignment (instead of =), = is used for comparison (instead of ==), blocks for if-, for- and while-statements are mandatory, and there is no fallthrough for switch-statements.
Analogous to the way SPECS is an alternative syntax to C++, other programming languages with alternative syntaxes include: assembly language (the AT&T assembler syntax, the Intel syntax, and the High Level Assembly syntax); also various literate programming languages and their non-literate form. Sometimes a natural language such as Uzbek language has more than one significantly different written form.