Llun—a high‐level debugger for generated parsers

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.