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No, I'm not talking about an academic setting. This is not about the language but about his expression of it in this specific instance of the grammar. As the
by vidarh 2y ago
No, I'm not talking about an academic setting.
This is not about the language but about his expression of it in this specific instance of the grammar.
As the article makes clear, he didn't understand the language, and my claim is that is to a large extent down to how it is expressed.
Not throwing away this specific grammar instance is something you can't afford.
- kragen 2y agosometimes having an lalr parser generator tell you where the ambiguities are in your grammar can be a useful step to understanding the language you're trying to describe. you're probably right that once you do understand it, you should throw away the grammar given as an example and write a new one ;)
- vidarh 2y agoSure, especially for anyone not used to writing parsers using a parser generator is a good way of validating assertions about it. But for that parser, just starting by cleaning it up would be a big improvement irrespective of formalism. Even if you get an unambiguous parser, if you can't read the grammar you'll end up with nasty surprises anyway...
- kragen 2y agoagreed!