From: Vladimir Prus (ghost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-05-23 05:01:57
I think that to make futher discussion of Spring usefull, we should first of
all agree on some points.
1. Potential scope
I have already said that Sprint is unfit for large grammars. The author says
"Sure a C++ grammar would most probably choke the parser". It is therefore
necessary to establish which grammars are suitable. This can be done through
experiment only.
Joel, could you make some more grammars and give performance results
compared with traditional parsers, time needed to write and debug parsers,
and so on?
(Besides, your code fails to compile under g++ 3.0 and bcc 5.5.1).
2. Syntax
Proposed syntax has prefix "*" and "+". This is likely to confuse anyone who
knows what EBNF is. Reuben Fries and later David Abrahams have already
proposed different syntax. Is it better? I tend to say "yes".
3. Possible extensions
Douglas Gregor's idea of compiling Sprint expression looks very neat. I think
that if some automata building libary is available, it can be easily
accomplished. However, such a library should be completely independent one.
-- Regards, Vladimir