Re: Anyone got a yacc template generator ?

Gianni Mariani <gianni@engr.sgi.com> writes:


>After the bazillionth time I've written an application using yacc I've
>come to the brink of writing a grammer -> application template
>generator and I thought before I go spend time on this effort, I would
>like to know if one is available.


I've spent much of the last fer years, doing something similar, Insted
of doing a job, get an automata to do it for me, the only problem is
.... the grammar needed to control automata is distinct for each
application. It was only then did I realise, that the grammar I used,
usually mirrored the data structure I was trying to deduce from the
input stream... I then went on to produce a very simple volatile
database object definition language, that generated both "C" for the
database and an LL(1) grammar, so that object definitions could be
automatically read and written in ascii both over sockets, and read or
modified by humans ...


        So what's my point ? ... Grammars reflect the information
requirement of their application ... The eskimos have 17 words for
"snow", because thay need that level of information about
snow... maybe you might look to produce a grammar in an abstracted
layer above that of the application, or re-using the information
required to describe the application and not with separate genalised
grammar generator. However if you do succeed along the generalised
meta-grammar lines, I'd be mighty intersted !!!




Mark
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