[antlr-interest] ANTLR 3 & hidden token management?

[Loring Craymer]

Kay--

I tend to think that it is "early" rather than "late" in the design process.  This is the first point at which people can comment from experience with a working version of ANTLR 3.  ANTLR 3 is not yet implemented in ANTLR 3; I consider that essential for a "mature" implementation, and consequently see 3.1 as the first "real" release.  For that matter, the parsing engine has not yet been fully shaken down (it's getting close).  Ter keeps making adjustments--mostly for the sake of efficiency at this point--in response to user-detected issues.  There are good reasons for beta testing!

Most of the interface suggestions, like symbolic channels, will not get implemented for ANTLR 3.0.  However, they can still be put on the "to do" list and be implemented later.  Features will not be placed on the "to do" list, however, unless someone points out the desirability.

Nor is the default ANTLR 3 interface going to be the only one.  ANTLR Yggdrasil (see my whitepaper/manual on the antlr.org site) will have some significant advantages.  First of all, there is true separation of target language from grammar specification.  Then too, the first (0.5) release will support heterogeneous trees, automatic code generation for data types, lexer editing (! for deleting characters), and a few other features.  The rewrite syntax is much simpler--and easier to implement--than the complicate mess that Ter came up with for ANTLR 3 (in fairness, I should point out that his is an extension of the attribute grammar syntax used for BNF-based--rather than EBNF--parser generation), as well as being more powerful.  I expect to have a version out this week; I am pretty much down to cleanup work with only a little more testing needed.

--Loring

 		
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Get on board. You're invited to try the new Yahoo! Mail Beta.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.antlr.org/pipermail/antlr-interest/attachments/20060807/ebf2ffd3/attachment.html