Re: Am I parsing this correctly? (when do I build the symbol table)

"Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>
Sat, 19 May 2007 09:34:06 +0200

          From comp.compilers

Related articles
Am I parsing this correctly? (when do I build the symbol table) iecc@ryandary.com (Ryan Dary) (2007-05-17)
Re: Am I parsing this correctly? (when do I build the symbol table) wyrmwif@tsoft.org (SM Ryan) (2007-05-19)
Re: Am I parsing this correctly? (when do I build the symbol table) mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de (Dmitry A. Kazakov) (2007-05-19)
Re: Am I parsing this correctly? (when do I build the symbol table) DrDiettrich1@aol.com (Hans-Peter Diettrich) (2007-05-19)
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Re: Am I parsing this correctly? (when do I build the symbol table) jeffrey.kenton@comcast.net (Jeff Kenton) (2007-05-19)
Re: Am I parsing this correctly? (when do I build the symbol table) gneuner2@comcast.net (George Neuner) (2007-05-19)
Re: Am I parsing this correctly? (when do I build the symbol table) 148f3wg02@sneakemail.com (Karsten Nyblad) (2007-05-20)
Re: Am I parsing this correctly? (when do I build the symbol table) ulimakesacompiler@googlemail.com (Uli Kusterer) (2007-05-20)
[4 later articles]
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From: "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: Sat, 19 May 2007 09:34:06 +0200
Organization: cbb software GmbH
References: 07-05-067
Keywords: parse, symbols
Posted-Date: 20 May 2007 22:06:29 EDT

On Thu, 17 May 2007 21:43:38 -0700, Ryan Dary wrote:


> Sub do_something_else( byRef i As Integer )
> i = i * 10
> End Sub
>
> Function do_something( i As Integer ) As Integer
> Dim a As Integer = i + 10
> do_something_else i
> Return a * 5
> End Function
>
> My understanding of the syntax tree is that I'm not supposed to be
> worried about the "meaning" of the code, but rather the "structure" of
> the code. So, I'm not building a symbol tree at this phase... the
> problem with that seems to be that I'm unable to make heads or tails
> of the lines of code within the function declaration. For instance,
> as I parse the Dim statement (which is used to declare a variable), I
> am able to parse the components "Dim a As Integer = <exp>" where the
> <exp> (expression) seems to be impossible to really parse without
> having a symbol table thus far in the parsing. I wouldn't know if "i"
> is a variable or a function or a constant, because I don't have any
> way of looking it up in a symbol table.


Why do you want to know anything more than "'i' is an identifier"? The only
thing you really need to know when parsing <expr> is the tokens of.
Identifier is a token and usually the language defines a formal way of
recognizing identifiers in the source without looking into any symbol
tables. So it could be something like: starts with a letter, has digits,
letters and underscore, not a reserved word. It is also a good idea to add
an additional level of delimiters like semicolons at the statements ends.
This makes reading programs easier and for parsing it would mean a
possibility to recover after typo errors.


--
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de


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