3 ms·

Check out RAML: https://github.com/raml-org/raml-spec https://github.com/raml-org/raml-spec Maybe it will fit the bill? It can even encode sum types. But I'm

• igravious 10y ago
  That's not really what I mean. Take the file `parser.mly` from http://andrej.com/plzoo/html/miniml.html http://andrej.com/plzoo/html/miniml.html . See how it has it's own format for describing grammars. So does Yacc, so does X, Y, and Z. Is there an interchange format for parser generators?
  • kragen 10y ago
    There's BNF, and there's DFDL, and there's just plain lists of productions without the extra decorations in BNF, but basically no. The issue is that each parser generator in current wide use has its particular funky set of limitations that you have to hack around one way or another when you write the grammar for it: it can't handle left recursion, or right recursion, or ambiguity, except in certain special cases (maybe if it doesn't continue for more than one token, or two syntax-tree levels), or it can handle them but has potentially exponential runtime, or it just arbitrarily resolves them in a certain way which may be adequate for your needs or may require you to restructure the grammar, or whatever. And then there are lots of ways that our languages aren't quite context-free, and different parsing systems have different ways to shoehorn that into a basically context-free framework. I think it's maybe a solvable problem, but I haven't seen anyone try to solve it.