From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2007-11-17T00:06:15+09:00
Subject: Re: Alternative Ruby grammar

Ryan Davis wrote:
> 
> On Nov 15, 2007, at 23:20 , Markus Liedl wrote:
> 
>> I have spent the last months to write an alternative Ruby grammar now
>> registered at rubyforge.org under the name "Ruby top down grammar".
>>
>> The grammar is hosting language neutral. It must be interpreted or
>> translated to be run, i.e. to parse something. Currently there are two
>> translators, one to Emacs Lisp, the other to C. Both produce recursive
>> descent parsers.
>>
>> The whole grammar is written in 270 rules taking 1500 lines. It
>> unifies lexical and syntactic analyses.
>>
>> Another popular naming for such a grammar is Parsing Expression
>> Grammar. I extended some forms I found absolutely necessary. It's a
>> neutral and minimal but still practical grammar definition
>> language. The variation used here contains 31 different forms. The svn
>> repo contains a description of it.
> 
> Dude... Congratulations! That is damn impressive!
> 
> I've tried, TWICE, to do an LR to LL flip on the ruby grammar (sans-PEG) 
> and failed both times... My brain is just not that big. Using PEG 
> definitely seems to be the way to go. We hung out and talked to the 
> primary implementor of ometa at OOPSLA and are probably pushing in that 
> direction over the medium to long term.
> 
> Only now that I've got Parsetree's Uber Test Zuite(*) would I attempt 
> such a task again, and hesitantly at that.
> 
> I noticed a lot of elisp in your source tree... please tell me that 
> you've hooked this up to ruby-mode! :P
> 
> (*) PUTZ is not the most creative acronym... it could use some help.
> 
>     Parse Tree Easy Werification Yay! = PTEWY!

But we need *two* names, one for the grammar and one for the test suite. 
The grammar is easy: "ARRRG" - Another Really Robust Ruby Grammar".

But the test suite ... how about "STAPLES" -- Suite to Test All of 
ParseTree's Logic, Execution and Stuff.


> 
>     I dunno...
> 
>