From: Phil Tomson <rubyfan@...>
Date: 2008-01-30T14:31:47+09:00
Subject: Re: Treetop Email Parser

On 1/29/08, Clifford Heath <no@spam.please.net> wrote:
> Phil Tomson wrote:
> > On 1/29/08, Matt Mower <matt.mower@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Would I be alone in finding Objective-C support useful?
> > An Objective-C backend for TreeTop would rock!
>
> Once the basic framework for multiple output languages was there,
> it wouldn't be hard to add. At the moment there's a Ruby builder,
> but the interface doesn't allow a simple substitution of another
> builder. A fairly simple cleanup would fix that.

What do you think would be involved to create this framework for
multiple output langauages?  Any design docs?

> I'd also like it
> to emit more meaningful names, like "rulename_result" and
> "rulename_sequence" instead of "r1" and "s0".


>
> > That said,  looking at the output from tt it seems that it's very much
> > oriented towards Ruby's dynamicity -  extend is used extensively, for
> > example.
> > Not saying an Objective-C backend would be impossible, though....
>
> Not at all. The code blocks would have to be emitted into new classes
> for Java. For C#, they'd be partial classes. I don't know Obj-C, but
> I doubt it's harder than those two.

Yes, it's probalby easier in Obj-C.


Phil