Re: writing a JavaScript Scanner/Parser

"oliverhunt@gmail.com" <oliverhunt@gmail.com>
Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:59:47 -0800 (PST)

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writing a JavaScript Scanner/Parser kilik3000@gmail.com (Kilik) (2008-01-17)
Re: writing a JavaScript Scanner/Parser oliverhunt@gmail.com (oliverhunt@gmail.com) (2008-01-28)
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From: "oliverhunt@gmail.com" <oliverhunt@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:59:47 -0800 (PST)
Organization: Compilers Central
References: 08-01-047
Keywords: tools, practice
Posted-Date: 29 Jan 2008 02:05:02 EST

If your goal is merely to learn about writing parsers i would strongly
advise you look at another language -- javascript has some excitingly
complex constructs. Just to get a feel for it you may want to look at
the bison grammar from JavaScriptCore:
http://trac.webkit.org/projects/webkit/browser/trunk/JavaScriptCore/kjs/gramm
ar.y


That includes the semicolon handling (there are places where
semicolons can be left out in JS) as well as most of the other pre-JS2
idiosyncrasies.


--Oliver


On Jan 17, 1:20 pm, Kilik <kilik3...@gmail.com> wrote:
> As a purely academic exercise I would like to write a scanner/parser
> for JavaScript. I know that there are many existing alternatives for
> this, but I want to do my own so that I can learn. I'm thinking that
> the output of my program will be an abstract syntax tree for
> JavaScript. No need for a full blown JS runtime or anything like
> that.
>
> I would, however, like to get off on the right foot. Can anyone
> recommend the best place to start? For example should I use a parser
> generator or try to implement this by hand. ...

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