Re: Bison =?UTF-8?B?ZGV0ZXJtaW5pc+KAi3RpYyBMQUxSKDEpIHBhcnNlciBm?= =?UTF-8?B?b3IgSmF2YS9DKysgKGtpbmQgb2YgY29tcGxleCBsYW5nYXVnZSkgd2l0aG91dCA=?= =?UTF-8?B?J2xleGFyIGhhY2snIHN1cHBvcnQ=?=

Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@aol.com>
Sat, 18 Aug 2012 10:13:46 +0100

          From comp.compilers

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From: Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@aol.com>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2012 10:13:46 +0100
Organization: Compilers Central
References: 12-08-005
Keywords: bison, design, comment
Posted-Date: 19 Aug 2012 17:00:35 EDT

hsad005@gmail.com schrieb:
> I need to write a parser for a programming langauge which is as
> complex as C++/Java, and to even complicate the matter, there are
> constructs in this langauge that doesn't allow me to use
> type/identifier dis-ambiguating lexer hack.


Why don't you fix your language, and remove such ambiguities? Look at
Pascal or other Wirthian languages...


> In other words, I will
> have to return just one lexical token (say IDENTIFIER) from the lexer
> for both type references as well as non-type variable references.


This shouldn't be a big problem, as long as the parser does not rely
on such a distinction. Once a symbol has been defined, it can contain
some indication about its nature.


> Given these restrictions, I was wondering if it would be a good idea
> to pick yacc/bison for my parser...? Or, should I consider a hand
> written recursive descent parser.


I don't see how this decision is related to above problem.


> Regards.
> [Get it working in bison, then in the unlikely event that's not fast
> enough, profile your compiler to see where it's spending its time and
> fix what needs to be fixed. Although in theory GLR can be very slow,
> in practice the ambiguities are generally resolved within a few tokens
> and the performance is fine. compilers always spend way more time in
> the lexer than the parser anyway. Writing RD parsers by hand can be
> fun, but you never know what language it actually parses. -John]


There exist parser generators for several models. I also doubt that -
except in misdesigned C-ish languages - a compiler spends significant
time in the lexer. This may be true for dummy parsers, which do
nothing but syntax checks, but not for compilers with code generation,
optimization and more.


DoDi
[Compilers spend a lot of time in the lexer, because that's the only
phase that has to look at the input one character at a time. -John]


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