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Llun—a high‐level debugger for generated parsers
Author(s) -
Glass S.,
Ince D.,
Fergus E.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
software: practice and experience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1097-024X
pISSN - 0038-0644
DOI - 10.1002/spe.397
Subject(s) - computer science , debugger , parsing , debugging , programming language , compiler , visualization , grammar , lr parser , parser combinator , natural language processing , artificial intelligence , linguistics , philosophy
Parser generators such as yacc have been used in a large number of applications, not just those that involve compiler writing. This has meant that these tools are being used increasingly by nonspecialist developers. A consequence of this is that good support is required for debugging a grammar and its generated parser(s). This paper describes Llun, a debugging tool that visualizes the operation of a generated parser at both a high‐level and a low‐level. Llun is superior to other parser visualization products by virtue of the high‐level facilities it offers. The paper describes some of the problems encountered using parser generators, outlines a visualization system which addresses a number of the problems and uses a taxonomy developed by Price to categorize the system. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.