Power, James F. and Malloy, Brian A.
(2001)
Exploiting Metrics to Facilitate Grammar Transformation
into LALR Format.
In:
SAC '01 Proceedings of the 2001 ACM symposium on Applied computing.
ACM, pp. 1-5.
ISBN 1581132875
Abstract
The parser-generator yacc is one of the oldest examples of
a domain-specific language, providing significant enhancements
over hand-coded parsers in the area of speed, efficiency and maintainability. Despite its widespread use, often
in highly complex systems such as compilers or program
analysis tools, there is relatively little written about the integration
of parsing, and yacc-based parsers in particular,
into the software engineering process.
We exploit software metrics as an aid toward estimating the
complexity of preparing a grammar for the ISO C++ programming
language for input to yacc. Our metrics provide
a means of assessing the relative merits of the trade-off between
preserving the grammar's structure and rearranging it
to ease implementation of the resulting parser. We see this
work as part of a larger process of designing well-engineered,
re-usable and reliable program processors, which themselves
will play an important role in the future design of code-based
software-engineering tools.
| Item Type: |
Book Section
|
| Additional Information: |
This is the preprint version of the published chapter, which is avaialable at DOI: 10.1145/372202.372789 |
| Keywords: |
Metrics; Grammar Transformation; LALR Format; parser-generator; yacc; ISO C++; programming language; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Science and Engineering > Computer Science |
| Item ID: |
6453 |
| Identification Number: |
https://doi.org/10.1145/372202.372789 |
| Depositing User: |
Dr. James Power
|
| Date Deposited: |
07 Oct 2015 16:10 |
| Publisher: |
ACM |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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