Re: [boost] [Christian S] Spirit and ANTLR - Request for example

Subject: Re: [boost] [Christian S] Spirit and ANTLR - Request for example
From: Christian Schladetsch (christian.schladetsch_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-06-09 11:04:26

Hi John,

This is somewhat unexpected.

The reality for me and my workmates for years has been about boost::spirit:
"boost is fun to look at" or "boost has useful things" or "boost::spirit is
awesome, wait... what?"

Point being that every real person, self included, that has ever tried to
use boost::spirit has gone through three stages:

1. wow, it uses C++ static compile-time rules!
2. gee, this is slow to compile
3. ok, i can't use this. its too slow to compile and the error messages are
pointless

The reality is that Spirit tries to make C++ do something it shouldn't do.
Joel and the others think otherwise. But yeah, the C++ *compiler* is not a
language tool.

It's a clever thing, but hey, the rest of us just think they are silly.

Regards,
Christian.

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 2:50 AM, John Phillips
<phillips_at_[hidden]>wrote:

>  Christian,
>
>  Inside the directx thread you asserted that there are things that ANTLR
> can do and Spirit can't. This met with some resistance, but I would like to
> take a different approach.
>
>  Please post a working code example, along with rationale for why you want
> to do it, that shows something ANTLR can do, but Spirit can't.
>
>  The goal is to move this out of rthe land of unsupported allegations, and
> into specific examples that can promote specific responses. My experience of
> Joel and Hartmut suggests that if you have any such real examples, they will
> use them as a basis for improving Spirit, a process which benefits everyone.
> If you display examples, and Hartmut and Joel (or anyone else) respond by
> providing working examples of how Spirit does that, too, then better
> information is propagated on the list, and again everyone benefits.
>
>  In general, this is a better way to critique by comparison. Provide actual
> working code for the comparison, and there is far less room for
> misinterpretation of intent or conclusions.
>
>                        John
>
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