[antlr-interest] 3.0 multiple language support

Terence Parr parrt at cs.usfca.edu
Sun Aug 8 15:10:38 PDT 2004


On Aug 4, 2004, at 10:29 AM, Tiller, Michael (M.M.) wrote:
> Based on the response to this thread, it seems like different people
> would approach this kind of thing in different ways.  So it seems like
> the best solution is to be as flexible as possible.  I think a basic
> action language could be used to handle most grammar related actions.
> For people who need to support multiple languages I think the macro
> approach makes sense.  For those who still want language specific
> actions in the grammar, I never objected to having that as well.

Yep, flexibility will remain key.  I think it is fruitless to try to 
make a grammar with extremely complicated actions like a full pascal->C 
translator language independent. At best, we can hope for a 
tree-building grammar possibly with symbol table management actions 
for, in this example, pascal.  Then have some templates/example 
pascal-AST tree walker grammars people can use for their specific 
application (such as C translation).  This puts the 
application-specific code out of the way of the most re-usable 
component, the parser/tree-builder pascal.g.  The tree walkers will 
mostly be application specific so there is no point worrying about 
making them language independent.

As a tactical issue, I wonder if having two kinds of actions is 
appropriate, one for a simple target independent action-language and 
one for language specific stuff.  Perhaps <<language specific>> and 
{antlr actions like newline}.  Just thinking out loud.

Ter
--
CS Professor & Grad Director, University of San Francisco
Creator, ANTLR Parser Generator, http://www.antlr.org
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