Re: [boost] In the Spirit of Challenge

From: Juan Carlos Arevalo-Baeza (jcab.lists_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-11-08 23:21:30

On Thu, 7 Nov 2002 18:09:03 -0800, Noah Stein wrote:

>I believe this is already under way.  Juan Carlos Arevalo-Baeza (JCAB for
>short) is currently in the middle of implementing a C++ parser.  I believe
>he even has error support already.  If he's not active on Boost, I would
>suggest looking for him over on the Spirit list.

   :) Thanks, Noah. I don't usually follow Boost. Too much traffic for me to deal with. But Joel alerted me of this thread (thanx).

On Thu, 07 Nov 2002 21:47:31 -0500, David Abrahams wrote:

>>2. This is the biggie - how about writing a full-fledged C++ parser (with
>>symbol tables!) in Spirit? Now that would be cool...
>
>That's a work-in-progress, AFAIK.

   Kinda. There's a first try, based on Hartmut's C grammar, which was doomed to fail. And then there's a fairly complete lexer (which just ignores directives) and a test that uses it for parsing names with scopes, including a first pass at a scope database with proper update and lookup semantic actions, so it can be used by the parser.

>I think once you get a C++ parser
>you'll probably discover it's not all that useful without something
>which can represent the type system.

   That is absolutely correct. You need to have access to the current set of definitions (types, variables, functions, classes...) in order to parse C++ correctly.

>And then you pretty much
>implement the whole template machinery... well, I think you can guess
>what kind of project that turns into.

   I still think it's doable. I'll keep working on it, off and on. At this rate, it should be ready in about... er... 5 to 10 years O:-)

   Salutaciones,
                    JCAB
email: jcab_at_[hidden]
ICQ: 10913692 @WORK: 101728263
WWW: http://www.JCABs-Rumblings.com