ANTLR3 emits a backend in C. http://www.antlr3.org/api/C/index.html http://www.antlr3.org/api/C/index.html . However, ANTLR4 does not. I have no experience with

ANTLR3 emits a backend in C. http://www.antlr3.org/api/C/index.html http://www.antlr3.org/api/C/index.html . However, ANTLR4 does not. I have no experience with this backend. Another example is LEMON, developed and used for SQLite, at http://www.hwaci.com/sw/lemon/ http://www.hwaci.com/sw/lemon/ . It is only a parser. You can have a hand-written tokenizer, use lex, or an alternative like re2c or ragel. I have seen LEMON praised a few times on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10295087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10295087 ). I have no experience with it.