When is better to use a parser such as ANTLR vs. writing your own parsing code?

Posted by ViralShah on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by ViralShah
Published on 2010-03-16T17:07:19Z Indexed on 2010/03/16 17:11 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 156

Filed under:

parsing

|

antlr

I need to parse a simple DSL which looks like this:

funcA Type1 a (funcB Type1 b) ReturnType c

As I have no experience with grammer parsing tools, I thought it would be quicker to write a basic parser myself (in Java).

Would it be better, even for a simple DSL, for me to use something like ANTLR and construct a proper grammer definition?

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about parsing

Hot to fix nautilus desktop on linux mint

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
so I'm using Linux Mint 13 with Cinnamon and suddenly there are no icons on the desktop and the right click doesn't work, it's like the desktop doesn't start up at all, but the Cinnamon interface and everything else are working just fine. This happens only when I open the session with Cinnamon, if… >>> More
Is parsing JSON faster than parsing XML

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm creating a sophisticated JavaScript library for working with my company's server side framework. The server side framework encodes its data to a simple XML format. There's no fancy namespacing or anything like that. Ideally I'd like to parse all of the data in the browser as JSON. However, if… >>> More
Looking for a tutorial on Recursive Descent Parsing.

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am trying to parse some data to no success. Can anyone recommend a good introduction with a lot of examples to Recursive Descent Parsing? I haven't been able to find any. >>> More
Parsing XML with Hpricot, a Gem of a Ruby Gem

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
Need to parse complex XML documents but don't know where to begin? Leave the task to Ruby's powerful Hpricot library. >>> More
Parsing scripts that use curly braces

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
To get an idea of what I'm doing, I am writing a python parser that will parse directx .x text files. The problem I have deals with how the files are formatted. Although I'm writing it in python, I'm looking for general algorithms for dealing with this sort of parsing. .x files define data using… >>> More

Related posts about antlr

Antlr question: cannot get Antlr tool to compile simple file from ANTLRWorks

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Here is the grammar file: grammar fred; test : 'fred'; Here is the batch file to launch the tool: SET JAVA_HOME=C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_24 SET PATH=%PATH%;%JAVA_HOME%\bin SET ANTLR_HOME=c:/users/don/workspace/antlrAssign/lib/ java -cp %ANTLR_HOME%/antlr-3.3-complete.jar antlr.Tool… >>> More
Improving ANTLR DSL parse-error messages

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm working on a domain-specific language (DSL) for non-programmers. Non-programmers make a lot of grammar mistakes: they misspell keywords, they don't close parentheses, they don't terminate blocks, etc. I'm using ANTLR to generate my parser; it provides a nifty mechanism for handling RecognitionExceptions… >>> More
ANTLR - accessing token values in c/c++

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hello, I am trying to parse integers and to access their value in antlr 3.2. I already found out how to do this in Java: //token definition INT : '0'..'9'+; //rule to access token value: start : val=INT {Integer x = Integer.valueOf( $val.text ).intValue(); } ; ... but I couldn't… >>> More
Removing Left Recursion in ANTLR

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
As is explained in http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2652060/removing-left-recursion , there are two ways to remove the left recursion. Modify the original grammar to remove the left recursion using some procedure Write the grammar originally not to have the left recursion What people normally… >>> More
Jar not found when executing class

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi there, I'm working through the ANTLR book and there are many examples that should be easy to compile using the command line. Some information to get te problem: antlr-3.2.jar contains the ANTLR classes. I added the antlr-3.2.jar to the CLASSPATH environment variable (Windows 7) and when compiling… >>> More