parsing

Ole Agesen [CONTRACTOR] Ole.Agesen at Eng.Sun.COM
Fri May 27 17:12:34 UTC 1994


Ivan,

about the released system, I can say the following:

It is correct that the parser is in the VM (and only there can you find
a full definition of Self syntax).
The closest you can get to a parser written in Self is the "parser test" 
in the test suite, but it is a parser for an old subset of Self, i.e.
it does not parse today's Self. Also, I'm not sure how useful the output
of it is.
Then there is the full LR(1) lexer/parser generator, Mango which you can
give a grammer and it will return you a lexer/parser that produce parse
trees, but... I don't think you can write a context free grammar that
describes Self syntax. You can get close and it is possible that the
remaining problems can be hacked up. (I mean, I used Mango to write a
full ANSI C parser and I'd hate to admit that it can handle C but not
Self).
If you try, I'd certainly be interested in hearing more about how it 
goes.

I'm curious about what you need the parser for? 

Good luck

Ole



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