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From: Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com>
Subject: Re: Ayacc/Aflex "entropy" (P2Ada)
Date: 1999/10/30
Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9910301717450.21024-100000@shell5.ba.best.com>#1/1
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References: <3813716C.52655126@Maths.UniNe.CH> <7v2400$e02$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
 <7v30jd$3i6$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7v32oe$9ic1@news.cis.okstate.edu>
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Date: 1999-10-30T00:00:00+00:00
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On Tue, 26 Oct 1999, Robert Dewar wrote:
> 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.

I know you hate this, but is there any way this tutorial can be made
available on the web? Or, barring that, a precise reference to which 
compiler construction conference, etc., etc. Not everyone has easy access 
to a good university library!

> 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 :-)

More "quotable Dewar"! I'm slowly coming around to agreeing with this, 
though yacc still has the advantage (like C) of being widely known and
used. 

-- Brian