Hi All,
Could you please share some advice on the following situation?
I wrote my first Petit Parser.
From the documentation I read that:
1) it is possible to depend on other parsers making the development more
modular.
2) The docs also suggest that, in order to separate grammars rules from
productions, we can make a parser with productions a subclass of a parser
which defines the grammar.
I started applying 1) so my structure is something like
AbstractParser " contains some common basic elements common to all
subclasses)
StatementAParser
StatementBParser
PLParser "this guy uses the StatementX parsers"
So there is a parser for different statements of the programming language.
The PLParser uses PetitParser dependency mechanism to rely on the
Statement*Parsers. For instance:
PLParser>> ruleB
^ (self dependencyAt: StatementBParser) ruleB
So far so good, the grammar is working, the parser works.
Now, I would like to write the productions, separately from the grammar
part (remember 2) ), so I should make subclasses adding the productions in
the form
>>ruleA
^super ruleA ===> [ my production code]
The point is that PLParser explicitly depends on Statements*Parser, and the
name of the Statement*Parser appears here and there, so creating subclasses
would result in maintenance nightmare. The new layer of parsers with
productions will duplicate the dependencies and I foresee it will be a mess.
So now, I think that having just one big class with all the rules for the
grammar is better if you plan to separate productions code isolated from
the grammar.
Am I right? Maybe I'm missing some point regarding writing composed parsers
and separating productions from grammar.
Any pointer or comment is welcome.
Arturo
