Re: Semantic actions in Yacc ?

Frazer Worley, #909980 DAD (frazerw@dseg.ti.com) wrote:
: First up, I have a limited knowledge of compilers and so please
: forgive me if this is a dumb question.


: I want to add semantic actions to a Yacc parser. The way I'd considered
  .....


: digits : /* empty */
: | {} digits {} digit {}
: ;


  .....


: Now this causes reduce/reduce conflicts in Yacc. Is there a way to
: avoid this ? Or is there a better way to add semantic actions ?


For your info: adding an action to the left edge of every production
in an LR(1)-based grammar weakens its strength to that of LL(1),
unfortunately. Hence, there is a theoretical reason behind your
experience.


LALR(k) would fix this (k>1 tokens of lookahead), by the way (in
that actions could only reduce the strength of the grammar to LL(k)).


: to do this already - yacc2rdp or something ?


There isn't a general tool that can take an LALR(1) grammar and convert
it to LL(1) for theoretical reasons etc..., but the removal of left-recursion
and such is no big deal and there must be tools around for that.


: Or, is there another compiler generator which I could use instead
: of Yacc which would enable me to do what I want ?


Sure, RDP looks nice, the Cocktail/GMD and new stuff by Josef Grosch
is nice too. You can also check out PCCTS which is LL(k) for k>1
and has mucho other features that might interest you. Check out
newsgroup comp.compilers.tools.pccts and ftp site ftp.parr-research.com
in pub/pccts.


Good luck,
Terence
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