Re: Diplodicus: A parser with infinite tokens of lookahead

Dear Diplodicus developer.


> Introduction:
> I got myself into the peculiar situation where I simultaneously needed
> an XML parser and a parser for a language product that I am writing.
> I looked at yacc but all of the problems of the single token of
> lookahead and ambiguous grammars really irked me. Although I'm not by
> any stretch of the imagination a computer science guru, I set out to
> go and see if I could not write a better parser generator. Did I
> succeed, I think I did, but I need some peer review but don't know
> where to get it.


There are more in the world than just YACC. There are even quite a few
parser generators which are even able to deal with arbitrary lookahead
and ambiguous grammars, to name a few: ANTLR, BtYACC, and the parser
generator technology based on the formalism SDF. The latter is based
on generalized LR parsing and allows the definition of arbitrary
context-free grammars in a modular way.




> This sort of thing seems useful, and if, so, where would I post it,
> announce it, etc, so that someone could have a look at it and let me
> know if I am crazy or just reinventing the wheel.


It is very hard to decide on the given information that your approach
is valid. But if you think you have something interesting, you could
write a paper and submit it to, for instance, the CC2003 (a Compiler
Construction conference).


> If there's a product or open source project that does this, I'd like
> to know.


I would advice you to have a look at this SDF parsing technology, see
http://www.cwi.nl/projects/MetaEnv/
for more information on this technology.




-- Mark




----------------------------------------------------------------
M.G.J. van den Brand,
Department of Software Engineering
CWI
Kruislaan 413, NL-1098 SJ AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands.


Tel___(+31) 20 5924213 WWW____http://www.cwi.nl/~markvdb/
Fax___(+31) 20 5924199 Email__Mark.van.den.Brand@cwi.nl

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