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Re: "Documentation by paper"


On Tue, Feb 03, 2004 at 06:56:49PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Richard Kenner <kenner@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu> writes:
> 
> > Yes, but a *user* of bison is usually a compiler writer!
> 
> Er, no.  Not even remotely.  A user of bison is usually someone who has
> something they want to parse that's representable by a simple grammar.  I
> would wager that the majority of uses of bison in practice are for parsing
> configuration files.

Most definitely, in my experience.  I taught myself yacc/bison using the
Levine text well before my first compiler course, specifically to write a
parser for various input files for my then-employer.  Nobody else in my
group there had ever written a compiler, but they'd all used some yacc
variant for config or data files.

-- 
"What attribute do you consider most valuable to the politician?"
"To be able to raise a cause which shall produce an effect, and
then *fight the effect*."
    - Captain T.W.S. Kidd and Senatorial candidate Abraham Lincoln


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