Re: [boost] Any interest for a parser class?

From: joel de guzman (djowel_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-01-15 11:22:05

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Vladimir Prus" :

> David B. Held wrote:
> > Is there any reason why the Spirit parser (spirit.sourceforge.net) wouldn't
> > be suitable for these applications and more?  I'm sure it would be almost
> > trivial to write a command-line parser with semantic actions using Spirit,
> > and it seems like a waste of valuable programmer resources to be
> > re-inventing the wheel.  Perhaps it's too big?
> 
> Because:
> 1. I think that parsing proper is not the most complex thing. It's assigment 
> to program variables and validation that was hard, at least for me.

Have you seen Spirit's semantic expressions?

> 2. Spirit is nondeterministic recursive descent parser. I don't find this is 
> acceptable. We want to detect ambiguity in option specification.

Not accurate. There are already more deterministic stuff going on.
Ambiguity can be constrained. RD is an implementation detail.
Research is now towards recursive ascent and even template-
metaprogrammed-automata.

--Joel