Detecting ambiguities in grammars

[Sylvain Schmitz]

Hi all,

If you ever used bison in GLR mode, and got a few syntax errors at 
run-time upon detection of some ambiguity, then you might have wished 
for a static check on the grammar itself that would have revealed the 
ambiguity earlier.

I have started working on an ambiguity check in bison, and I think I 
should announce it here.  The check is really very experimental, and 
probably most of the code will be flushed down the toilet before a real 
tool ready for the end user comes out.  No effort was made to make the 
ambiguity report intelligible.
All I would like is to hear what you think of the idea and of the first 
results I have.

So, if anyone is interested, a research report on the implementation and 
the modified bison source are available from there: 
<http://www.i3s.unice.fr/~schmitz/papers.html#expamb>.  Comments on any 
aspect of the tool (or of the report) are of course most welcome.

--
Regards,

  Sylvain