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From: Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>
Subject: Re: Ayacc/Aflex "entropy" (P2Ada)
Date: 1999/10/26
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In article <7v32oe$9ic1@news.cis.okstate.edu>,
  dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Oct 1999 01:36:45 GMT, Robert Dewar
<robert_dewar@my-deja.com> wrote:
> >I find it appalling that people use such rusty tools as YACC
> >and AYACC, these are very limited tools which seem to
completely
> >ignore the considerable advances in this area in the last 25
> >years!
>
> A better recommendation is . . .
>
> >Automatic lexical analyzers are almost completely useless
> >in a compiler context.
>
> Blanket claims without evidence or explanation are also almost
> completely useless.


A reference is the tutorial I gave at the compiler construction
conference some years ago. The point is that efficient lexical
analyzers are very easy to write, it is pretty much as easy to
write such as to generate the tables for an automatic tool, and
most of the automatic tools are horribly slow (they are one of
many tools in our relatively recently developed technology of
horribly slow compilers :-)


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