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syntactic sugar 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.
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