bob@ncar.UCAR.EDU (Bob Gray) (08/08/88)
I am looking for a couple of people who have the time and
interest to look at my GLA distribution and give me feedback
before I make it generally available.
GLA is a generator for lexical analyzers and is described in
Summer USENIX 1988 Proceedings.
It produces directly executable code instead of interpreted
tables (as does lex and flex). The token specification language
of GLA is quite different from lex. We distinguish between
literal and non-literal tokens. When a literal token is
scanned, the only action possible is to return a code for it.
When a non-literal token is scanned, a "processor" can be
called with the token as an argument and finally a code is returned.
Several common processors are provided with GLA, such as putting
an identifier into a hash table, making an integer from a series
of digits, storing strings...etc.
This specification language is much more constrained than
lex which allows any C code, but we believe that the mechanisms
are appropriate for many lexical analysis tasks. The advantage of GLA
is a much more concise and easy to write specification,
and fast execution speed.
This distribution is about 300K, and is FTP'able. If interested
in helping out, send me mail. Thanks
bob@boulder.colorado.edu
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