listing all directives sounds more like documentation than a task. this does not sound very useful for a direct comparison between languages. a directive in one language can be the solution to a problem that is solved in a very different way in another language. more useful would be to pick a set of problems that may typically be solved with a directive or a commandline option to the interpreter or similar and then compare how this problem is solved everywhere. --[[User:EMBee|eMBee]] 17:19, 9 October 2011 (UTC) : As far as comparison, this kind of task seems perfectly appropriate to demonstrate some of the nature of the complexity of the language. If I understand the task correctly, a PHP example would be very long, because PHP has a number of ways to affect the behavior of the language. Likewise, a C or C++ example would be very long, but owing to a great deal of compiler-specific runtime pragmas. On the other hand, a Forth example would likely be very, very short. Each example offers a higher-level kind of comparison, and in a more direct fashion, than defining a task and hoping an example writer gets the "point" of the task. (By my observation, most tasks on RC which are intended to have a deeper-than-surface meaning and utility are often misunderstood by example writers). --[[User:Short Circuit|Michael Mol]] 21:03, 9 October 2011 (UTC) : As for the task itself, I'm not entirely certain what is fundamentally meant by pragmatic directive, but that kind of question is usually better answered by someone adding code, someone else saying, "no, that isn't right," and then watching the discussion that ultimately leads to mutual understandings, if not agreement. (If there's disagreement, that disagreement occasionally leads to a useful fork, too) I know I'm not the only one on RC who has learned more about programming theory by watching or participating in such discussions. --[[User:Short Circuit|Michael Mol]] 21:03, 9 October 2011 (UTC)