Re: Parsers for Programming Languages.

[Matthew Estes <address@hidden>]

At 05:13 AM 9/17/2003 +0200, Robert Feldt wrote:
>I'm not sure about the power vis-a-vis van Wijngaarden grammars but
>Generalized/Tomita LR parsing is often powerful enough for parsing 
>programming languages.
         If I understand it correctly, that can only do context-free 
grammars(which is more than just plain LR can do...).
         van Wijngaarden grammars can actually describe ANY language, but 
pragmatically, I would want to use it to parse context-sensitive languages, 
which Generalized/Tomita LR doesn't do(unless I'm thinking of the wrong 
thing...)
         I also forgot to mention that some of the rest of my info came 
from "Parsing Techniques: A Practical Guide." 
<http://www.cs.vu.nl/~dick/PTAPG.html>
         The chief value of getting context-sensitive things handled by the 
parser is that some things which are usually considered "semantics"(like 
type checking, and declaration of variables before use, etc.) can be 
handled in the parsing algorithm.
         I'm also curious if there's still useful work(for programming 
languages application in particular) in the field of parsing. I would 
assume so, and that this would be a good direction(hint, I'm a graduate 
student looking at thesis topics) to work in.
         Thanks for the response.

                                                         Matt Estes