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Taming the PL/I syntax
Author(s) -
Marks B. L.
Publication year - 1984
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.4380140807
Subject(s) - computer science , parsing , programming language , compiler , lr parser , generator (circuit theory) , syntax , byte , table (database) , top down parsing , artificial intelligence , database , physics , power (physics) , quantum mechanics
Ideally the syntactic part of a PL/I compiler would be generated directly from the semi‐formal definition of ANSI Standard PL/I. A practical approach to this is described, using finite state machines and an LALR parser generator. The parser uses a method due to Aoe which avoids list searching. Adapted for this method the PL/I grammar has 841 states. The parse table generator exploits the freedom to renumber states in a way that improves on previous algorithms for compacting the tables. The parser tables occupy less than 4K bytes.