Re: LL Parsing

"R. Anthony Vestal" <ravesta@sandia.gov> schreibt:


>Is there a class of applications that benefit by top-down parsing?


IMO *every* application will benefit from top-down parsing. A parser
usually will not only interpret some source code in the context of
some grammar, but shall execute some actions, whenever something
what-requires-action is recognized. In a top-down (procedural)
approach the expected context is quite clear, in contrast to the
context in a bottom-up state machine.


Perhaps I'm wrong with this opinion, but I also like to learn more
about bottom-up and top-down parsing in practice.


Perhaps a mix of both approaches might be the best solution, resulting
in compact code when a state machine can be used, and with other
benefits when a procedural approach is used for other parts of the
grammar?


DoDi
[The original Ritchie C compiler used top-down recursive descent for most
of the parsing, but bottom-up operator precedence for expressions. -John]

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