On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 1:59 PM, Jeff Law <l...@redhat.com> wrote: > On 01/24/2013 12:55 PM, Diego Novillo wrote: >> >> >> I do see, however, a few areas where Clang/LLVM have gone that I do >> not think GCC is currently thinking of entering: "toolability" (for >> the lack of a better term). Clang's design follows a different path >> than g++. It's not just a code generating parser, it is a pure parser >> that also generates code. The difference makes it suitable for any >> kind of tool that needs to understand C++: static analyzers, code >> re-formatters, syntax highlighters, and other similar tools. >> Additionally, it is designed as a library, so it can be embedded into >> applications. > > Yup. We kicked stuff in this area around as well as we were discussing the > problems early folding presents. In an ideal world, the G++ parser would > turn into something that can be used not just for G++, but as a library for > other tools that need to parse C++ code (doxygen, gdb and I'm sure there's > others).
First all of I should confess that I have had long interest in having a "modular" g++ parser in the sense that I would like the ability to retarget it to other purposes that we cannot realistically expect a single simple C++ compiler to satisfy simultaneously. However parsing C++ is a very tricky. Depending on the level of fidelity to the C++ spec, parsing involves template instantiation, which itself may involve overload resolution, etc. So when we are talking about a C++ parser module, this means we need a much better typed AST to represent the semantics graph before gimplification. -- Gaby
