Correct forum for discussing documentation issues?

[Andre Artus]

On Saturday, 3 August 2013 at 12:22:48 UTC, Peter Alexander wrote:
> On Saturday, 3 August 2013 at 11:22:42 UTC, Andre Artus wrote:
>> I'm not sure that I am explaining this properly as it seems 
>> that at least 2 different people were under the impression I 
>> was making a point quite different from the one I was trying 
>> to make.
>
> I understand. It seems that there are two "ways" that a static 
> import declaration can be produced in the grammar.
>
> I'm not sure if it counts as a bug, or just a redundant 
> production (but then, where are the redundant productions for 
> "public import" etc.?)
>
> I'm not an expert on formal grammar specifications, so I don't 
> know if redundant productions are okay or not. I'm also never 
> sure where you draw the line between parsing and semantic 
> analysis (the grammar allows "override import", is that okay?). 
> I'm guessing you would formally say that the grammar is 
> ambiguous at the production level, but non-ambiguous after 
> semantic analysis.
>
> So, I think you're right, but I don't know if it's a bug or not.

I poked around in the DMD parser's source (parse.{c|h}) which 
doesn't seem too difficult to follow (I take it it's handwritten, 
not generated). But until I step through it with a debugger or 
create a trace log I'm not going to be confident.

As I read it the parser implements "static import" as shown in 
the spec (which is easier with a handwritten parser).

It's not a huge problem; just that people trying to write an 
input file for a parser generator may run into issues around 
disambiguation which could be confusing if they don't understand 
what is going on: the repetition (in the spec) is [I believe] a 
reflection of an implementation detail, probably to speed up the 
common path.

I did a search for D grammars online before ultimately embarking 
on my own as I could not find one that could parse any 
non-trivial D source. And I am yet to find one that parses the 
imports in all it's possible manifestations.