[antlr-interest] ENHANCEMENT - Add option to output tokens as symbolic constants (enum)

[Terence Parr]

On Oct 15, 2007, at 6:38 PM, Austin Hastings wrote:

> In looking over the gunit source code, I find several lines that  
> look like the following:
>
>    if ( ts.testSuites.get(input).getType()==27 ) {
>       // ...
>    }
>    else if ( ts.testSuites.get(input).getType()==28 ) {
>       // ...
>    }
>
> Guess what that does?
>
> One answer, of course, is that it encodes the transient results of  
> the token generation process in a way that is disconnected from the  
> process, so that if tokens are regenerated (such as by me, trying  
> to add some features) the old numbers become meaningless.
>
> Another answer is that it sprinkles magic numbers through the code.
>
> Both answers are considered less than "good" programming practice.  
> I understand why it was done, and how to fix it. But I suspect this  
> kind of greasy-elbows access of the innards is pretty common,  
> especially since Antlr v3 is pretty lax about data hiding.

It's generated code; everything is fair game ;)  That said, making it  
pretty is a good idea.

Ter