Let's stop parser Hell

[Dmitry Olshansky]

On 05-Jul-12 22:22, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 7/5/12 12:39 PM, Roman D. Boiko wrote:
>> On Thursday, 5 July 2012 at 16:28:57 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>>> It's all too common for someone to suggest that we should
>>> do something or implement something without ever attempting to do it
>>> themselves, and in general, stuff around here gets done because
>>> someone really wants it done, takes the time to do it, and sees it
>>> through until its done and in Phobos.
>>>
>>> - Jonathan M Davis
>>
>> Resume: everybody is welcome to join effort of translating DMD front
>> end, and improving Pegged.
>>
>>
>> Also I would like to invite those interested in DCT project to help me
>> with it. Right now I'm trying to understand whether it is possible to
>> incorporate Pegged inside without losing anything critical (and I think
>> it is very likely possible), and how exactly to do that.
>>
>> Dmitry proposed to help improve Pegged (or some other compiler's) speed.
>>
>> Anyone else?
>
> I'd really want to create a task force on this, it is of strategic
> importance to D. In Walter's own words, no new feature is going to push
> us forward since we're not really using the great goodies we've got, and
> CTFE technology is the most important.
>

Count me as interested.
CTFE needs more correctness & speed though. So to put it blantly - no 
it's not possible right NOW.
BUT it doesn't prevent us from planing and doing a proof of concept. 
Pegged seems a good starting point even if we end up re-writing it from 
scratch.

> I also am actively opposed to a project of just translating D's
> front-end to D and dropping it into Phobos because it would smother (a)
> work on generic parser generators, and (b) strong, dependable
> formalization of D's syntax.
>

Well put. It shouldn't stop people from doing parsers, IMO the more the 
merrier.


-- 
Dmitry Olshansky