Subj : Re: Parser generators for a simple language form. How?
To   : comp.programming
From : Jon Ripley
Date : Tue Aug 02 2005 11:18 pm

Alex Fraser wrote:
> "Jon Ripley" wrote:
> 
>>This has been bugging me for a while and I'd appreciate some input.
>>
>>I have a number of simple scripting languages of similiar specifications
>>that I use for rapid application development that I would like to make
>>available to a wider audience. The wider audience use whichever
>>operating system they want to on whatever platform they purchased.
> [snip]
> 
>>Any suggestions for tools that I can use which would be appropriate for
>>generating parsers for languages of this type? They should not be too
>>difficult to learn as I want to spend the time porting the code rather
>>than spending months working out how to use the parser generator. I have
>>looked into yacc and bison but these don't seem to be appropriate and
>>appear to have a huge learning curve.
> 
> Which language are the parsers currently implemented in? Are they "hand
> coded" or did you use a parser generator?

The parsers are currently implemented in 100% hand coded BBC BASIC. I 
could probably write a bootstrap compiler-compiler-compiler in BBC BASIC 
targeting C to create the portable compiler-compiler - but I'm hoping to 
avoid that step.

> What makes you say that yacc and bison "don't seem to be appropriate"?

After several weeks of googling them, reading their documentation, 
ploughing through associated websites and generally playing with them I 
have not been able to determine the language definitions to use in 
either tool which would allow me to create the bulk of the code 
required. I have looked at several other compiler-compilers and parser 
generators but none strike me as the one to go with.

Anyways,
Jon Ripley
-- 
http://jonripley.com/

.