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> automatically generates a compiler front-end For a very narrow definition of compiler frontend. The missing piece to make this super awesome would be generat

• tgv 4y ago
  Parser generator would be more apt.
  • jzimmerman64 4y ago
    It's not just a parser generator; it also generates the AST, traversals, lexer, and pretty-printer. And it can generate the AST for your IRs and target language, if you specify them in BNF as well. This is a pretty significant piece of a compiler, all told.
    • tgv 4y ago
      Generating the tree is trivial. The lexer is part of the parser. A pretty printer is not part of a compiler. The rest you have to do by hand. I know the name is a play on yacc (Yet Another Compiler Compiler), but it generates only a part of a compiler, the parser.
      • jzimmerman64 4y ago
        > Generating the tree is trivial. If by "generating the tree" you mean generating definitions for the AST data structures, this is nontrivial enough that yacc does not do it. > The lexer is part of the parser. Again, yacc (a parser generator) does not include a lexer generator; that requires a second package such as lex. > A pretty printer is not part of a compiler. A pretty-printer for the IR or target language is an important part of a compiler, as one needs to render the output in a form that some other tool (e.g., an assembler) can accept. A pretty-printer for the source language also comes in handy. > The rest you have to do by hand. What you have to do by hand is to write a function from the source AST to the target AST (i.e., a compiler backend). langcc generates the whole frontend, not just the parser.