Re: C++ intermediate representation.

Aaron Gray <angray@beeb.net> wrote:
>Parsing C++ properly is no mean feat. C++'s grammar is ambiguous...
>The new GCC's 3.4.x and 4.0 both use recursive descent with
>backtracking parser technology rather than LALR(1) or Generalized LR.


In his "The Design and Evolution of C++", Stroustrup says that he let
Aho and Johnson talk him out of writing his own recursive-descent
parser for C++... and he now thinks that was a big mistake.


Even C doesn't really get along well with bottom-up parsing -- after
over ten years of trying, the grammar in the 1989 ANSI C standard was
the *first* correct LALR(1) C grammar (no, the one in PCC wasn't
correct, it mishandled various unusual cases) -- and C++ is an order
of magnitude worse.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
                                                                -- George Herbert | henry@spsystems.net

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