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

Subject: Re: [boost] [Christian S] Spirit and ANTLR - Request for example
From: Stuart Dootson (stuart.dootson_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-06-09 11:17:28

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 4:04 PM, Christian Schladetsch
<christian.schladetsch_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> 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

Hmmm - I can't be a real person, obviously....

I've used Spirit 1 on several projects with great success. I've also
use Antlr on several projects with great success! What's the
difference? Well, Antlr (for me) implies a reasonable amount of
project overhead - building the runtime support, having additional
files to configure, having to deal with the conceptual break between
Antlr and C++. Spirit doesn't. It does mean a compile-time burden,
true, but that burden is the reason I've used Antlr for larger
grammars rather than Spirit.

> The reality is that Spirit tries to make C++ do something it shouldn't do.

If that were true of Spirit, it would also be true of a lot of Boost.

> 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.

I'm sorry, but name calling like that isn't warranted, especially when
you are asserting that your opinion is universally held, when I think
you'll find it's not.

> Regards,
> Christian.

Stuart Dootson