looking for experienced TXL users

Hi all,


I have just downloaded the TXL package from ftp.qucis.queensu.ca /pub/txl.
(you can find more information about TXL in the free compiler list as
described in the comp.compilers' faq). From the documentation of TXL, it
seems it is simple, easy to use and flexible.


In the documentation that came with the .tar file (the TXL Programming
Language, Syntax and Informal Semantics Version 7), it mentioned that
there is a second document, called 'The TXL User's Guide'. I cannot find
postscript file on the above-mentioned ftp site that contains this
document. Do you know where I can obtain a copy (postscript file is
preferred) of this user's guide?


Do you know if there is any other languages that can be use to transform
the parse tree generated by the parser, and unparse it when all the
transform has finished????




--- if you have used TXL, please read the following paragraphs ---


I am planning to use TXL to transform VHDL files to a subset of IEEE's
vhdl standard. I believe this job can be handled by Yacc/Lex, and there
are yacc/lex parsers written already. So if I found these yacc/lex files,
I only need to 'fill in the blanks'. But the syntax of yacc/lex is rather
scary and is harder to read than that used by TXL. Do you think its a good
idea to use TXL for my application (i.e. read a VHDL file, parse it,
translate it to a subset of the language, and prints out the new program)?
Or should I use yacc/lex instead (which saves me time writing the grammar,
but I still need to re-learn yacc/lex).


The only problems I see so far with my application are that, the program
will need to read information from several vhdl files (this is like
reading header files when compiling C/C++ files I think), and translate
enumerated types to their equivalent numerical values. It was not stated
clearly in the TXL document if multiple input files reading is supported
or not. It also didn't mention if we can define/construct our own symbol
table or other data structure when we are parsing the input (I guess I
need to read all the constants and enumerated data type declarations
during parsing, insert them into the symbol table, and retrieve their
values from the symtab when I transfrom the statements). I cannot find
anything on this topic in the doco that came with the tar file (The TXL
programming language, Syntax and Informal Semantics Version 7).


Please reply by email to wing@research.canon.oz.au, and I'll post a
summary to the newsgroups comp.compilers and comp.lang.misc later (or
email directly to you if requested).


Thanks in advance


Wing C.
--
Wing Chung wing@research.canon.oz.au
Canon Information Systems Research Australia Phone +61 2 805 2976
P.O. Box 313 North Ryde, NSW, Australia 2113 Fax: +61 2 805 2929
--

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