[antlr-interest] Question: ANTLR and LLVM ... + Clang

[Ruslan Zasukhin]

On 6/17/11 8:22 PM, "Kevin J. Cummings" <cummings at kjchome.homeip.net> wrote:

Hi Kevin,

Well, don't know why you think they cannot be compared.

ANTLR - is Parser -> AST  ->TreeParser

Clang 
    contains also parser -- own, seems to be hand-made,
    then they have more logic phases.

On this page very good explained how C++ FrontEnd is bigger
of parser

   http://www.semanticdesigns.com/Products/FrontEnds/CppFrontEnd.html


So again, if we have task to proceed C++ sources, we may choose between:

1)  ANTLR and develop or use some C++ grammar,
     then spend time on (all/some) features describe on above page

2) take in hands complete C++ Frontend and ...DONE?
    For now I see two strong enough such frontends.
    Clang and SemanticDesign (which I cannot test it seems as demo).


=============
> ANTLR is a tool which can help you build compiler front-ends.  If you
> were industrious enough, you could re-write CLang using ANTLR.
> 
> ANTLR is primarily a JAVA tool (you at least need JAVA to run the tool
> to compile your grammar), but can be used to produce other targeted
> languages (C/C++, Python, etc) for your actual front-end.  While the C++
> support is minimal in version 3 (better in version 2.7, but lacking in
> some of the ST support) resulting in much use of C code which can be
> compiled using C++, you could use it to interface directly to the LLVM
> IR API if you wanted to.  But, I think Ter's example is probably the way
> to go, at least until Version 4 starts to grow and we see what kind of
> C++ runtime support will exist for ANTLR v4.
> 
>> When one should prefer Clang vs ANTLR or reverse?
>> Your opinions?
> 
> I think you are asking the wrong question here.  Please compare apples
> to apples, and not to cucumbers.

-- 
Best regards,

Ruslan Zasukhin
VP Engineering and New Technology
Paradigma Software, Inc

Valentina - Joining Worlds of Information
http://www.paradigmasoft.com

[I feel the need: the need for speed]