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

From: Schoenborn, Oliver (oliver.schoenborn_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-01-16 11:24:28

> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Abrahams [mailto:david.abrahams_at_[hidden]]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2002 11:54 AM
> To: boost_at_[hidden]
> Subject: Re: [boost] Any interest for a parser class?
> 
> 
> Will you submit spirit to boost? I want to see it here; I 
> strongly believe everyone will benefit.

Seems to me Spirit is targetted at a very special group of programmers.
Spirit is an impressive piece of work.  So impressive, actually, that I
don't want to use it because: 

- I need to know EBNF notation (or an approximation of it, if only to
understand the concepts); do I really want to learn a new notation just for
command line parsing, or even file parsing?
- All I need is a toaster to *toast my bread*; not to also make it, tag it,
bag it and deliver it in my plate and gauge the toasting level to the bread
ingredients for the particular slice in the toaster.  

In other words, perhaps for really special applications that need super
advanced grammar (like building a compiler), Spirit would be worth the
effort for me to learn.  But frankly, a simple line parser based on
token-parameters with error reporting is sufficient in 99% of cases, fast to
build, extendable, robust, easy for everyone on the team to understand, even
someone who knows little about parsing.  It can't deal with grammar as
complex what Spirit can, but so can't the average programmer.

Just my
"know-very-little-about-EBNF-but-built-a-good-and-easy-configuration-file-pa
rser" 2 cents worth.

Oliver