Re:Advanced Compilers: Self-Guided Online Course
by pfalcon on Sunday December 13, 2020 @09:59AM
(#25406980)
> Most languages are context sensitive. Most language tools are context free. How did we go so wrong?
We never did. We always knew that any real-world useful grammar is multi-level and attribute (well, it's constraint-based, though depending on your definition of "attribute grammar", those are equivalent). That's why we so much like recursive-descent parsers: adding any multi-level constraints are so easy to them - you have a full Turing-complete language at your disposal, unlike simplistic 1-dimensional DSLs of most parser generators.
We never did. We always knew that any real-world useful grammar is multi-level and attribute (well, it's constraint-based, though depending on your definition of "attribute grammar", those are equivalent). That's why we so much like recursive-descent parsers: adding any multi-level constraints are so easy to them - you have a full Turing-complete language at your disposal, unlike simplistic 1-dimensional DSLs of most parser generators.