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[COLD] Parser instability

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mon Apr 7 03:05:30 1997 )

Date: Mon, 07 Apr 1997 00:04:47 -0700
To: coldstuff@cold.org
From: Jeff Kesselman <jeffk@tenetwork.com>

I've foudn a number of places in my debuygging where code of teh form

if (expression)
   statement;

Fails and

if (expression) {
  statement;
}

Works correctly. i havent found a pattern yet of exactly what kind of
stamenets cause these problems.

This however reinforces a beleif of mien that the entire parser aught to be
re-written.  At the same time the issues of <cr> not being a proper white
space character in the outer-syntax could also be addressed...

If someone wanted to write a BNF, and write the action routines, ild be
willing to do a parser in PCCTS.  This has the additional advanatge of,
since PCCTS is LL(k) as oppsoed to ACC being LALR, of meanign it woudl
generate more intelligent syntax error messages.

JK