[antlr-interest] Question: Compiling generated parser code using C target with VC++

[Jim Idle]

Wei.Wei at uni-konstanz.de wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> we are using ANTLR3 (ver. 3.1.3) to generate a Java parser using C target. 
> The generated code is supposed to be compiled with Visual Studio 2008, and 
> later used in a VC++ project.
>
> The grammar file that we used is Java 1.5 grammar for ANTLR v3 written by 
> Terence Parr. We found it in the list of grammar files at
>
> http://www.antlr.org/grammar/list.
>
> We inserted the following language option into the above mentioned grammar 
> file:
>
> options 
> {
>     language = C;
>     ASTLabelType=pANTLR3_BASE_TREE;    
> } 
>
> To integrate ANTLR3 into VS2008, we followed the instructions for using C 
> target on the Wiki page at
>
> http://www.antlr.org/wiki/display/ANTLR3/Using+the+ANTLR3+C+Target
>
> We successfully built the C runtime library (version 3.1.3) with 
> antlr3c_dll.lib generated. Then, we created a new VS project, and included 
> the references to the necessary header and library files in the project. 
> We also imported the custom build rules that we found within the 
> vsrulefiles subfolder inside the antlr3.1.3 release package.
>
> Next, we added the Java grammar file into the project. The 
> antlr3lexerandparser.rules rule automatically applied to generate the 
> source code of both parser and lexer. However, when we tried to compile 
> the generated C code, we got the compilation errors like the one below:
>
> javaparser.c(21743) : error C2231: '.getLine' : left operand points to
> 'struct', use '->'
>
> We also tried to define "_cplusplus" and then got compilation errors like 
> this:
>
> sourceannotations.h(42) : error C2061: syntax error : identifier 
> 'vc_attributes'
>
> We suspect the reason of compile failures to be the incompatibility of the 
> C target with C++. However, we see in the list of ANTLR3 targets list that 
> the C target should be compatible with C++ as of ver. 3.1.
>
> We will greatly appreciate if you can give some hints where we might have 
> done things wrong, and advise us how to successfully compile the C code of
> the parser in VC++.
>   
I thought I replied to this? Please use the Java grammar in the 
downloaded examples for the C target and not the Java version of it. It 
is under the C directory in the downloaded examples. The Java version 
contains embedded Java code in the lexer, which clearly will not compile 
in C or C++ and needs to be changed to be C code. The example grammar in 
the C directory already does this.

Jim