RE: AW: [Caml-list] Working Group: the future of syntax extensions in OCaml, after camlp4

["Jon Harrop" <jon@ffconsultancy.com>]

I worked on a commercial project written in OCaml in Q4 2012 that used
stream parsing. However, my project was to translate the whole thing into
F#...

I never used stream parsing in any commercial code I wrote myself. I did use
camlp4 quite a bit though and, I must say, the only problem I had was that
it was never finished (the docs end in "..."!). Moreover, my main practical
application of camlp4 was in using it to write parsers. Parsers written
using Camlp4 are nicer than with any other tool I have ever used. Would be a
shame if OCaml lost this or, if it did, gained the ability to write lex/yacc
in-line without having to battle with multi-stage compilation and a wide
selection of incomplete/broken build tools.

Cheers,
Jon.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: caml-list-request@inria.fr [mailto:caml-list-request@inria.fr] On
Behalf
> Of Alain Frisch
> Sent: 28 January 2013 12:15
> To: Gerd Stolpmann
> Cc: Daniel Bünzli; caml-list; wg-camlp4@lists.ocaml.org; Leo P White; Anil
> Madhavapeddy
> Subject: Re: AW: [Caml-list] Working Group: the future of syntax
extensions in
> OCaml, after camlp4
> 
> On 01/24/2013 05:24 PM, Gerd Stolpmann wrote:
> > It's used in the tool, but only for stream parsing. I could also
> > distribute the already-preprocessed file (and maybe I'll do so in the
> > next release).
> >
> > Stream parsing is certainly one of the topics to discuss.
> 
> I've no idea how widely stream parsing is used.  Has anyone some intuition
> about this?
> 
> Stream parsers probably fall in the same category as bitstring or sedlex
(custom
> notions of pattern matching).  It seems that stream parsers (which I'm not
> familiar with) require to be able to write expressions within "left-hand
sides",
> which might require special support.  Or maybe the whole left-hand sides
should
> just be quotations.
> 
> Anyway, for a basic infrastructure tool such as ocamlfind, I'd probably
advocate
> for a "manual" solution which works out of the box with a basic OCaml
> installation (ocamlyacc or manual top-down parser).  Gerd: does that sound
> reasonable to you?
> 
> 
> Alain
> 
> 
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