[antlr-interest] Targeting different runtimes with the same grammar

[Christopher Laco]

Chris Lambrou wrote:
> Is there a recommended way of writing a grammar so that it can be used to
> target different runtimes?  I'd like to be able to use the same grammar to
> target both C# (for use in an ASP.NET server application) and in JavaScript
> (for use by clients). The ANTLR book is filled with examples of how useful
> it can be to embed Java code within the grammar, but this couples the
> grammar to a specific runtime, which is something I'm explicitly trying to
> avoid.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Chris
> 

I just started with ANTLR this week. I think the answer is along the
lines of: use one grammar (lexer/parser) to create a AST (abstract
syntax tree) for your intermediate language representation.

Then, you just need to make multiple tree grammers to translate that AST
into multiple target languages.