Re: [Caml-list] CFG's and OCaml

[Erik de Castro Lopo <ocaml-erikd@mega-nerd.com>]

On Sat, 14 Aug 2004 01:25:59 +0100
Jon Harrop <jon@jdh30.plus.com> wrote:

> 
> I have some (probably trivial) questions about parsers:
> 
> 1. Are most programming languages designed to be implementable using 
> lex and yacc?

Maybe not lex and yacc, but most are designed to be parsed by 
LALR(1) parsers.

Currently the most difficult to parse language seems to be C++.

> 2. If so, are their designs restricted by this?

Unlikely.

> 3. If so, is the fact that most languages disallow "a<b<c" due to this?

This should be parsable by an LALR(1) parser.

Anyway, this is really just syntactic sugar for "a < b && b < c".

> 5. Is it productive to think in terms of coercing lex and yacc into doing as 
> much of the work as possible and then using postprocessing to do the rest 
> (e.g. this is the way I'd implement a<b<c)?

If a, b and c are ints, then the assember version of

       if a<b<c then ....

would be exactly the same as:

	if a < b && b < c then ....

Erik
-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
  Erik de Castro Lopo  nospam@mega-nerd.com (Yes it's valid)
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
"Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random
digits is, of course, in a state of sin." - John Von Neumann (1951)

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