Re: [Slightly OT] How to process lightweight text markup languages?

[Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org>]

Natasha Kerensikova <lithiumcat@instinctive.eu> writes:

> This led me to the conclusion that the only solutions are backtracking
> and simultaneously parsing all available possibilities (i.e. using a
> nondeterministic automaton). Considering the current state of computing,
> I should probably go for backtracking.

I don't follow; why is backtracking better than parallel parsing? They
both search the same tree of possible grammar sentences; it's just
depth-first vs breadth-first search.

> Basic backtracking would be pushing the current state when encountering
> an opening marker, and if the end is reached with a non-empty stack, pop
> the top-most state, replace the opening marker by the literal
> sequence of its representation, and restart parsing.

Right.

In parallel parsing, you don't wait for the first one to fail; you just
assume it will.

> If I'm not mistaken, adding precedences to the mix would just change the
> meaning of "end is reached" in the previous paragraph: it would not only
> mean the end of input, but also the ending marker of any
> higher-precedence construct currently in the stack.

Sounds right.

> Am I right so far? Am I missing something?

You are only missing an implemention of a parallel parser and lexer.
There is an example of the first in OpenToken; the second should not be
hard.

-- 
-- Stephe