Pratt parsing is a black box

Re:Pratt parsing is a black box by ogogmad on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @12:31PM (#50368797)

"Pratt can't parse statements" - can't you treat ';' as an operator whose meaning is "then"? You can then read "DOTHIS(); DOTHAT()" as an expression.

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Re:Pratt parsing is a black box by vinipsmaker on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @12:52PM (#50369110)

You need to forbid stuff such as:

  return return 1;

return itself isn't an expression (it's a statement) so it can't be used in places that expect expressions (such as the "argument" to return itself).

However extending Pratt parsing to handle this case is trivial: https://vinipsmaker.github.io/blog/article/statements-in-pra...

It's still an extension so not really pure Pratt parsing IMO (other practitioners of Pratt parsing disagree with me).

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