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On Tue, 29 Dec 1998 21:48:08 -0500, "Evan Powers" <ept### [at] aol com>
wrote:
>Has anyone considered redoing POV's parser entirely using Bison and Flex?
>Making a language grammar file, from what I know, would be child's play
>compared to understanding and changing the existing code. Plus it would make
>maintaining the language grammar (and thus the parser) ridiculously easy.
Maintaining and understanding the grammar is already ridiculously
easy, or at least as easy as understanding the bison definition-file
syntax. The only thing that makes it slightly more difficult is that
here is little if any documentation of the current parser structure.
One thing that will get in the way of a regular grammar for the POV
language is the #version directive, which can change the entire
grammar, so you might need multiple grammars and a clean way to switch
between them.
However, the idea of rewriting the parser in flex/bison does have some
merit when considered against the background of Chris Young's recent
posting to cgrr: everyone wants a standalone parser, but the current
parser is both severely intermixed with the existing code and covered
by the Team's solemn promises that it would never see commercial
misuse. A new parser, especially one written by someone who was
unconcerned about commercial use (and thus covered by an entirely new
version of POVLEGAL), might not suffer from those constraints.
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