Re: Free Ada parser

[okellogg@freenet.de (Oliver Kellogg)]

Craig Carey <research@ijs.co.nz> wrote in message news:<62gntvktko48ghlpls4ba46d4r0nh455ij@4ax.com>...
> 
> If YAcc was replaced with the moder advanced ANTLR C++ compiler, a
> likely main problem could remain:
> 
>   "I developed a "tiny C" grammar for ANTLR annotated to
>    produce trees to better understand what a real ANTLR
>    language front end would be like. One of the things that I
>    learned with this grammar is that debugging ANTLR grammars
>    is not that much easier than, say, debugging a YACC grammar.
>    There was a mistake in the production describing the for-
>    loop. ANTLR gave a non-determinism warning for the unary
>    minus production. I spent hours pouring over my expression
>    grammar containing the unary minus, but I could find no
>    error in it."

True, I had to resolve a couple of those ambiguities
while developing the ANTLR Ada grammar, but once you
really get into the ANTLR way of thinking it's not too bad.
Plus, this is a single-shot problem - it only affects the
development of the grammar itself but not its users.

--Oliver