This is the mail archive of the
gcc@gcc.gnu.org
mailing list for the GCC project.
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