[antlr-interest] LPG WAS Retaining comments

[Jim Idle]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: antlr-interest-bounces at antlr.org [mailto:antlr-interest-
> bounces at antlr.org] On Behalf Of Andy Tripp
> Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 3:55 PM
> To: Terence Parr
> Cc: antlr-interest at antlr.org
> Subject: Re: [antlr-interest] LPG WAS Retaining comments
> 
> Hmmm...a tool that automatically produces an "AST" just from an input
> grammar.
> What a novel concept!  ;)
> 
> But the authors call it an "AST" when in fact it's really just a parse
> tree, not an AST.
> Strange that the authors themselves would make such a mistake - to
> think
> that a parse
> tree might make a reasonable default AST...what a silly mistake.
> 
> Don't they realize that building an AST is hard, and no one should be
> able to
> get an AST "for free"? Don't they realize that's not an AST at all, but
> a parse tree, and that
> the *real* AST that this input grammar has asked for is a useful,
> simple, flat, data structure?
> 
> Clearly they just don't know what they're talking about  and so should
> be ignored.
> 

...Good Grief!

Charlie Brown.