Re: newbie: lexing and multi-character operators

Hallo,


Ajwitte wrote:
  > I'm hand-coding (for fun :) a lexer and parser for an interpreted
mathematical
  > language. Somewhat like Mathematica, only *much* simpler. My
  > question is, how does one deal with multi-character operators (for
  > example, ++ [increment])? For example, x++1 should be understood as
  > [x] [plus] [unary plus] [1], while, x+++1 should be [x] [increment]
  > [plus] [1]. At what stage of the translation should this distinction
  > be made?


++ is a multi-character operator that has actually another operator + as
prefix, thus the ambiguity. You cannot decide which operator + or ++ to
use, in the first example x++1 that you give above, until the 1 has been
scanned.


Until there your scanner must keep track of both alternatives, [x]
[incr] and [x] [plus] [unary plus]. With the grammar I have in mind, the
former alternative will be ruled out, during the syntax analysis phase.


Hans

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