I did not say that it was analytically ambiguous. My point was that there is little value, if any in a grammar which basically boils down to
(LTR* NL)* ; Jim > -----Original Message----- > From: William Clodius [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Friday, July 30, 2010 7:40 PM > To: Jim Idle > Cc: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [antlr-interest] Fixed field > > > On Jul 30, 2010, at 11:26 AM, Jim Idle wrote: > > > I think that you are barking up the wrong tree here. All your rules > > are completely ambiguous and if any of the fields do not exactly > > correspond to the number of letters, this will all fall over. ANTLR is > > not really meant for parsing fixed width fields where each field is just some > arbitrary text. > > You should just use something like awk to do this, or even a very > > simple java class that just reads a buffered input stream line by line > > and picks out the fields. > > > > Jim > <snip> > > Ambiguity is not a problem here, per se. If the grammar were completely > ambiguous I would expect ANTLR to report problems before he has a chance > to parse a file. I suspect his specific problem can be fixed by requiring that > agenda end with an end of file token. However you are correct that > automated lexing tools such as ANTLR are not designed for fixed width fields > and the convolutions required to handle such fields are as easily handed by > handwritten lexers, which in turn are more amenable to error reporting. List: http://www.antlr.org/mailman/listinfo/antlr-interest Unsubscribe: http://www.antlr.org/mailman/options/antlr-interest/your-email-address -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "il-antlr-interest" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/il-antlr-interest?hl=en.
