Re: Left Recursion in Yacc

    Mike <student1330@my-deja.com> wrote:
> Suppose I have a left recursive rule
> expression:expression ',' ITEM
>:ITEM
>
> Now I want to create a list of items separated by a ',' from my input.
> Although it is clear that the grammar would allow me to have a list of
> one or more items. What is confusing for me is the actions that would
> be taken. More specifically, how exactly would the recursion be
> handled. Would I get the list in reverse order? If yes, why is that.


Both left-recursive and right-recursive can produce the list in its
natural order. But right-recursive costs much more stack because yacc
matches patterns from left to right. So it's better to use left-
recursive than right-recursive if you have a long list.
right-recursive:
expression: ITEM ',' expression { $1->next = $3; $$ = $1; }
left-recursive:
expression: expression ',' ITEM { $3->next = $1->next; $1->next = $3;
$$ = $3; }
left-recursive returns the tail of the list, so you should use ->next
to get the head of the list.

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