[antlr-interest] "interactive" option

[Brian Smith]

In the documentation (http://www.antlr.org/doc/options.html#Options) 
there is a mention of a "interactive" property, with this note:

"Both the lexer and the parser have an interactive option, which 
defaults to "false". See the parser speed section above."

However, I can't find any reference to a "parser speed section." So, 
what does "interactive" do? It seems from the source code that it 
doesn't have any effect.

I ask because I am working on patches for ANTLR to better support 
interactive, incremental lexing in NetBeans.

I have already created a patch that allows the lexer to return 
partially-recognized tokens like this:
      "Hi, I am a string that is almost fini

Normally, the lexer would throw an exception. But, the NetBeans editor 
would prefer that instead the lexer returned STRING_LITERAL instead. So, 
I created an option "returnIncompleteTokens" that, when enabled at 
runtime (it is not set in the grammar file), causes the lexer to work in 
the way expected by the NetBeans lexer framework.

The patch is very simple, just a few extra lines in JavaCodeGenerator. 
It is similar to Bogdan's patch to JavaCodeGenerator for SATC (except 
his patch always returns INVALID_TOKEN when an incomplete token is 
reached). Since it is a runtime-only option (does not affect the grammar 
file) it isn't necessary to "port" to C# or C++ code generators.  Please 
let me know if you are interested in this patch.

- Brian


 

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