Subject: Re: Can I use Lisp?
From: rpw3@rigden.engr.sgi.com (Rob Warnock)
Date: 8 Nov 2000 00:27:17 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <8ua6l5$d5phr$1@fido.engr.sgi.com>
T. Kurt Bond <tkb@tkb.mpl.com> wrote:
+---------------
| cbbrowne@hex.net writes:
| > he's got a RE-like parsing system intended to provide a
| > similar ability to fairly readily build simple parsers.
| 
| The paper is "Pragmatic Parsing in Common Lisp", 
|     http://linux.rice.edu/~rahul/hbaker/Prag-Parse.html
| (also available in Postscript), originally published in ACM Lisp
| Pointers 4, 2 (Apr-Jun 1991), 3-15.  The paper reviews the classic
| META parsing technique which can be used to parse streams, strings,
| and lists.
+---------------

And far more than that. The META class of parsers can be used to build
full top-down recursive-descent compiler-style parsers, very quickly and
easily. Somewhere back around 1971(?), I used the META2 compiler-compiler
on a DEC PDP-10 to build a toy BLISS compiler in a weekend. (Generated
*horribly* inefficient but correct code.) Great fun!


-Rob

-----
Rob Warnock, 31-2-510		rpw3@sgi.com
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