Re: [ANN] Spirit C++ parser framework.

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