[antlr-interest] Java grammar accepting junk

[Ron Hunter-Duvar]

Hi,

I'm doing some Java parsing with Antlr 3.1 and the Java.g grammar from 
Antlr.org. When I pass it non-Java input (e.g. shell scripts), it 
complains a lot, but still acts as if the parsing succeeded. I noticed 
that the grammar didn't have an EOF token to force it to go to end of 
file, so I added a new top level rule:

sourceFile
  : compilationUnit EOF
  ;

and invoked it with that new target. Seemed simple enough. But it didn't 
help. The parser still happily accepts garbage:

  Parsing: test.sh
line 1:0 no viable alternative at character '#'
line 5:0 no viable alternative at character '#'
line 5:1 no viable alternative at character '#'
line 5:2 no viable alternative at character '#'
line 1:1 no viable alternative at input '!'
    Succeeded

The first and last line of output are from my driver code. Basically I 
was expecting the parser to throw an exception, which would have counted 
as a failure. Since it didn't, it counts it as a success.

Maybe I'm not understanding how error reporting works in Antlr 3.1. I've 
worked quite a bit with Antlr 2.7, but I'm new to Antlr 3. I don't have 
the book, and haven't found anything in the wiki that explains this. 
Perhaps someone can enlighten me?

Thanks,
Ron

-- 
Ron Hunter-Duvar | Software Developer V | 403-272-6580
Oracle Service Engineering
Gulf Canada Square 401 - 9th Avenue S.W., Calgary, AB, Canada T2P 3C5

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