Why does a programming language need keywords?

Question

For example (in C):

int break = 1;
int for = 2;

Why will the compiler have any problems at all in deducing that break and fo

Answer 1

FWIW, Tcl doesn't have any reserved words. You can have variables and functions named "if", "break", etc. The interpretation of a token is totally dependent on the context. The same token can represent a command in one context, a variable in another, or a literal string in another.