Re: Using Bison and Delphi

  "Mike Hahn" <mikehahn@rogers.com> schreibt:


>I would like to know if it's a good idea to use Bison to generate the
>parser, and then translate Bison's output, either using some tool or
>by hand, into Object Pascal. I am a complete newbie when it comes to
>writing compilers.


Perhaps you should try CoCo/R for your parser, to get Pascal code
immediately. Since CoCo creates recursive descent parsers, you can
step through the created code when debugging your grammar. Bottom-up
parsers (automatons) are not so easy to debug - if ever. At least I
recommend that you start with a recursive descent parser, to collect
some experience before you go on with bottom-up parsers.


BTW there exist Lex/Yacc (Flex/Bison) ports to Pascal, like tply41a
(Turbo Pascal) or dyacclex (Delphi).




The omission of punctuation between identifiers (dot operator,
argument list separator...) may cause more trouble than it's worth -
worth what at all? Since all tokens (identifiers...) must be separated
somehow, it doesn't make a big difference whether the separation
character is a space, dot, comma or whatsoever. Distinct separation
characters, instead of only whitespace, also allow for easier parsing
(less lookahead) and better diagnostics and error recovery.


DoDi

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