[Mono-list] Status of Bison port to C#

[Miguel de Icaza]

Hello Stephen, 

> This conflicts with the state interest of the Bison port for the C#
> compiler. Ravi is campaigning heavily for me to get involved with the
> compiler. I am taking class in compilers this term as a part of my
> Masters degree. I looked over jb2csharp. Its written in Java and uses a
> structure that is similar to Java CUP (the parser-generator used for the
> class).

Heh, I can see that being confusing.  Well, in the early days of the
project, I placed too much importance on the error recovery, but that
importance was a bit overrated.  

I would not mind moving to Bison, provided that the resulting parser
will not make me change the current source code (which might be needed
if they are not structurally the same).  I currently would rather spend
my time in fixing other areas of the compiler than porting from one
parser to another, for very little gain (because I would still have to
write the recovery code :-)

> I have downloaded the ECMA documentation describing the language
> specification for C Sharp. There are two chapters that talk about the
> grammar. I was going to start reading those.

That is a very good start.  Keep in mind that the grammar in the spec is
designed for human consumption, and not for an automatic parser
generator.  You will notice that our yacc grammar does not match the
spec grammar, because the spec grammar can not be used directly by Yacc.

I am not sure in which capacity you do want to get involved in the
project.

> Now do you agree with Ravi that I should start with jb2csharp or would
> be adding C# support to Bison be the key? I am just try to get a initial
> picture of where to begin.

I have not looked at jb2csharp so I do not have a solid opinion.

Miguel.