transcription, транскрипция: [ n. ]
[coined by Peter Landin] Features added to a language or other formalism to make it `sweeter' for humans, features which 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 variants `syntactic saccharin' and `syntactic syrup' are also recorded. These denote something even more gratuitous, in that syntactic sugar serves a purpose (making something more acceptable to humans), but syntactic saccharin or syrup serve no purpose at all. Compare candygrammar , syntactic salt .