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This is a nice counterexample to the wisdom that production compilers all use hand-written parsers. Of course, the current parser does suck, but...
by WallWextra 8y ago
This is a nice counterexample to the wisdom that production compilers all use hand-written parsers. Of course, the current parser does suck, but...
- swah 8y agoIIRC OCaml compilation was super fast and the errors were useful and pointed to the correct line. What is/was the problem with the current parser?
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoGenerally auto generated parsers have huge problems with error recovery (bailing out quickly) and reporting. They usually exceed in performance however. I’m not sure where OCaml stands.
- WallWextra 8y agoAs the blog post says: "Error: Syntax Error". Helpful error messages have not been my experience.
- a0 8y agoSyntax errors are suboptimal. They are usually reported at correct location and it's relatively easy to spot them. On the other hand type error messages are simply awesome.
- chubot 8y agoOne issue is mentioned in the blog post: The days of Error: Syntax error. may be numbered
- prosses 8y agoThey do not want to change the parser but the parser generator.
- coldtea 8y agoHow is this a counter-example? They move from a auto-generated compiler that sucks to another one (whose quality is yet to be seen). Even if it proves to be great, it would still be an outlier.