Path: csiph.com!weretis.net!feeder6.news.weretis.net!news.misty.com!news.iecc.com!.POSTED.news.iecc.com!nerds-end From: gah4 Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Re: Flex is the most powerful lexical analysis language in the world. True or False? Date: Fri, 6 May 2022 14:30:36 -0700 (PDT) Organization: Compilers Central Lines: 18 Sender: news@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <22-05-015@comp.compilers> References: <22-05-003@comp.compilers> <22-05-011@comp.compilers> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Injection-Info: gal.iecc.com; posting-host="news.iecc.com:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970"; logging-data="19076"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com" Keywords: lex, design Posted-Date: 06 May 2022 20:23:41 EDT X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com In-Reply-To: <22-05-011@comp.compilers> Xref: csiph.com comp.compilers:2997 On Friday, May 6, 2022 at 9:14:54 AM UTC-7, George Neuner wrote: (snip) > Not to mention that programming languages which tend to actually be > used also tend to be [relatively] easily parsed using LL(k). An important part of a programming language is that people can understand it. I suspect it isn't hard to design a language that computers can easily parse, but people can't. Your lexer only needs to be good enough for actual programming languages. As with BBQs, that doesn't stop people from trying. [Take a look at Postscript, which is trivial to tokenize and parse since it's a stream of tokens in RPN order, but making sense of it by humans is a challenge. Or, of course, m4. -John]