Re: Encaspulation: What to export

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Victor Porton" <porton@narod.ru> wrote in message 
news:ovmva2$1q20$1@gioia.aioe.org...
...
> I do use the word "parsing" because it uses techniques very similar to 
> text
> parsing, namely I use recursive descent.

I'd argue that most of what is typically called "recursive descent" per se 
isn't parsing, either, as it is a free-form glob whose set of languages is 
rather hard to specify formally. (There is a rather restrictive subset of 
"recursive descent" which strictly accepts LL(1) languages; that is the only 
thing, IMHO, that deserves the term. That's rarely used in practice for a 
variety of reasons, the main one being that LL(1) languages aren't very 
interesting.)

>...  For example recursive descent may analyze the same fragment of a tree
> more than once or it may skip some parts of the tree entirely.

That's not "recursive descent", that's just some code doing whatever it is 
that you need to do. Nothing wrong with that, but calling that "parsing" or 
"recursive descent" or anything other well-known term is just abusing those 
terms.

                                             Randy.