Re: Van Wijngaarden grammars

fanf2@thor.cam.ac.uk (Tony Finch) writes:
:>Has anyone written a compiler generator that uses van Wijngaarden
:>grammars to describe the language to be compiled?


> I vaguely remember one that used a restricted form of W-grammars. The
> restrictions were equivalent to making the meta-productions
> convertable to an attribute grammers. W-grammers are equivalent to
> the most general form a grammer which can compute anything, so its not
> likely that any marketable compiler would result. It would be too
> slow from all the generality.


Our A68 parser is a fairly straight-forward conversion of the
W-grammar into a recursive descent parser. Obviously the context
conditions (wheres and whethers) are handled by direct code, but it
does make for a fast and robust parser (modulo a few things that are
more awkward for recursive descent) and very easy to write (easier I'm
sure than working out how to use a parser-generating tool). But I
suspect this is more a reflection of the fact that Algol 68 and its
definition go hand in hand - the symmmetry between source text and
internal representation is very strong.


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dave Lloyd Email: Dave@occl-cam.demon.co.uk
Oxford and Cambridge Compilers Ltd Phone: (44) 1223 572074
55 Brampton Rd, Cambridge CB1 3HJ, UK
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