[antlr-interest] Re: ANTLR 3.0 question about common actions

[iank at bearcave.com]

> I think this is a worthy goal.  The thing I don't like about it is
> that you have to come up with a new psuedo-language and your users
> have to learn it.

  I also have the impression that we are talking about something like
  a pseudo-language.

  My concern here is that this is an example of feture creep.  The
  result of feature creep can be to kill off a new version or result
  in a less reliable version.

  As an ANTLR user one feature that is important to me is stability
  and reliability.  I have had at least one experience with ANTLR
  where I took a grammer that used to work properly a couple of years
  ago and used it with the latest version and it no longer worked.
  I'm still not sure what the cause of the failure was.

  I hate YACC.  That's why I'm an ANTLR user.  But sometimes I think
  wistfully of the stability of YACC.  The darn thing has not changed
  in decades (yes, YACC sucked then, and it still sucks in exactly the
  same way today).

  I think that what I am expressing is a natural tension between a
  user who wants to use ANTLR for production projects and a desire to
  move ANTLR forward adding new features.

  One partial resolution for this tension is to avoid revolutionizing
  the world.  Evolve features.  ANTLR already has a big learning
  curve.  It is a bit daunting to think of learning something new,
  which may not be stable, when my objective is to implement a parser
  for a little language.

  Ian


 
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