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Moreover, there are many places where people fiddle with hand-written parser code, nested functions evaluating regexes with many holes and unhandled edge cases

by vog 10y ago

Moreover, there are many places where people fiddle with hand-written parser code, nested functions evaluating regexes with many holes and unhandled edge cases - where they should have used a parser generator instead. So my impression is that in general, parser generators are underused, not overused. Anything that encourages people to use parser generators is IMHO a good thing. Ideally, parser generators should become as ubiquitous as template languages, with an similar race between libraries for ease of use, suitability for the most common cases, and lower entry barrier.

vinceguidry 10y ago
Templating systems, now that might actually be a use case! But again, there are already lots of templating systems out there. Just pick one and go on with your project. I think I really am just really spoiled by Ruby.
- vog 10y ago
  > But again, there are already lots of templating systems out there. Just pick one and go on with your project. But that's exactly my point: You can do that for template systems, but not for parser generators. (Well, you can, but your choices aren't nearly as nice.)
  - vinceguidry 10y ago
    Well, sure, but you don't just use parser generators for the hell of it. They have to fit into the broader overall context of a system that drives outcomes. It's easy to see what role a template system can play in such a project, much harder, for me anyway, to see what one would actually use parsing for outside of the rarefied context of building a new general purpose programming language. Anything you'd want to parse, there are already going to be parsers written. Just pick one and go. If you're just screwing around, by all means knock yourself out. But in all the real work serving real humans I've ever done, I have never been able to justify building out a parsing system. I can't even look at a regular expression without wanting to rip it out. I can see if you're maintaining the library that, say, does TOML parsing for Lua. But that's not in the realm of the everyday.

by vog 10y ago

vinceguidry 10y ago

Templating systems, now that might actually be a use case! But again, there are already lots of templating systems out there. Just pick one and go on with your project. I think I really am just really spoiled by Ruby.

vog 10y ago
> But again, there are already lots of templating systems out there. Just pick one and go on with your project. But that's exactly my point: You can do that for template systems, but not for parser generators. (Well, you can, but your choices aren't nearly as nice.)
- vinceguidry 10y ago
  Well, sure, but you don't just use parser generators for the hell of it. They have to fit into the broader overall context of a system that drives outcomes. It's easy to see what role a template system can play in such a project, much harder, for me anyway, to see what one would actually use parsing for outside of the rarefied context of building a new general purpose programming language. Anything you'd want to parse, there are already going to be parsers written. Just pick one and go. If you're just screwing around, by all means knock yourself out. But in all the real work serving real humans I've ever done, I have never been able to justify building out a parsing system. I can't even look at a regular expression without wanting to rip it out. I can see if you're maintaining the library that, say, does TOML parsing for Lua. But that's not in the realm of the everyday.