Re: Parsers for Programming Languages.

[Stéphane Payrard <address@hidden>]

On Tue, Sep 16, 2003 at 09:12:38PM -0400, Matthew Estes wrote:
> 	I've recently been doing some research into parsers and I have some 
> questions. I'm not sure if this is the best group to ask this in, but since 
> a) I was motivated to explore parsing because of interests in learning 
> about programming languages b) the goal of my research is to make it easier 
> to design programming languages I figure it would be a relevant
> topic.
 <snipped>

Mathematical model of parsing engine gives few clues about
their potential in the real world. If you want to study the tight
integration of a parser in a language, you should check the Perl6
specifications.

The already powerful Perl5 regexp engine is transmogrified into a
generic parsing engine tightly and cleanly integrated to the
language. This tight integration is necessary because the parser
must have access to the full name space of the language (lexical
scope, grammars as classes and rules as method...) to deliver its
full power.

See:
  http://dev.perl.org/perl6/apocalypse/A05.html
and

  http://dev.perl.org/perl6/apocalypse/A06.html

In Apocalypse6, pay particular attention to material about
macros. It is one of the devices to dynamically extend the
language.


--
  stef