Re: --- Regexps, compilers etc., prog help ---

Hursh Jain <sjain@a.chem.upenn.edu> wrote:
>I am interested in writing a regular expression evaluator, and also a
>toy compiler..


Basic regular expressions are dealt with in "Software Tools", which is
such a classic it's probably out of print.


Even AWK and PERL are pathetically restricted compared with SNOBOL
patterns. It might be of interest that the next release of the (free)
GNAT compiler for Ada is going to include a _full_ implementation of
SNOBOL patterns. (Robert Dewar worked on the SPITBOL implementation
of SNOBOL, and is one of the key players in the GNAT team.)


With this around, I expect never to write a regular expression
evaluator again in my life.


--
Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci.
[Well, sure, but there can be the issue of performance. I've written some
pretty rococo Snobol patterns in my time, with lots of backing up and
conditional assignments and stuff, but one thing they were not is fast.
REs can be matched in one pass, no backup. -John]


--

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