[antlr-interest] announcing new OpenJDK project: ANTLR grammar for javac

[Terence Parr]

On Jul 18, 2008, at 8:33 AM, Andy Tripp wrote:

> Hi Terence,
> I've been meaning to ask you about this.
>
> Is there going to be any "public access" to this code?

Presumably, yes.  The Java.g will have the appropriate updates from  
that work.

> Is there anything I or others can do to help?

Not sure at the moment.

> Is there a purpose, other than to make things cleaner and easier
> to maintain and enhance?

Well, A grammar has lots of it uses. For example, it can help build a  
better job of  language specification book.

> What does Sun think of this? Are they encouraging it?

Yep

> Do you know why they hand-wrote their parser rather than using a tool?

Speed most likely. Neal Gafter, the primary developer, is a freaking  
genius. He did very nice work, but with closures and other things it  
is becoming more and more difficult to maintain.

> Maybe you could apply (next year) to get some cash from Sun for this  
> work:
> http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2007-12/sunflash.20071205.1.xml

  interesting and I will look into it
Ter