1
Parsing: the solved problem that isn't
Updated (2014-10-24): If you find this article interesting, you may be interested in the follow-up article on an editor for composed programs .
Laurence Tratt
- Popular posts
- 26
- Total points
- 4,804
- HN comments
- 3,147
- Rank
- #238 personal
Visit tratt.net → On Hacker News Dec 2008 – Jun 2026
Software Engineering 22Programming Languages 10Tools & Productivity 5Systems & Performance 3Life, Learning & Writing 3Society, Policy & Culture 2
2
Why we need to know LR and recursive descent parsing techniques
A couple of people have asked me for my thoughts on part of an article from Tiark Rompf called (roughly) “ Just Write the Parser ” which advocates the use of recursive descent parsing over more “formal” approaches to parsing, at least in the context of teaching compilers. I’m fairly sure I read this article a couple…
3
Which Parsing Approach?
We all know that parsing is an important part of designing and implementing programming languages, but it’s the equivalent of Brussels sprouts: good for the diet, but a taste that only a select few enjoy. Unfortunately, I’ve come to realise that our general distaste for parsing is problematic. While many of us think…
4
What Challenges and Trade-Offs Do Optimising Compilers Face?
After immersing oneself in a research area for several years, it’s easy to feel like the heir to a way of looking at the world that is criminally underrated: why don’t more people want what I want? This can be a useful motivation, but it can also lead to ignoring the changing context in which most research sits. So…
5
Why split lexing and parsing into two separate phases?
“lex and yacc” are two terms that are used together so often that they can seem indivisible. lex takes a string as input and divides it up into lexemes (roughly speaking “words”) and yacc takes a sequence of lexemes and parses them. Since some parsing approaches such as recursive descent parsing unify these phases…
6
Why Aren’t More Users More Happy With Our VMs? Part 1 (2018)
Programming language performance is something that nearly everyone cares about at some point, whether they realise it or not. If you’re a programmer, you sometimes have to make your programs run fast; if you’re a user, you might be frustrated at a program that runs slowly, without knowing that it’s caused by a poor…
7
Retrofitting JIT Compilers into C Interpreters
C interpreters are a common language implementation technique and the basis for the reference implementations of languages such as Lua, Ruby, and Python. Unfortunately, C interpreters are slow, especially compared to language implementations powered by JIT compilers. In this post I’m going to show that it is possible…
8
How Difficult is it to Write a Compiler?
Recently I was discussing Converge with someone, and mentioned how little time the core compiler had taken to implement (no compile-time meta-programming, limited error checking, but a functioning compiler nonetheless) - only a few days. The chap I was talking to looked at me and told me that he didn’t believe me. I…
9
Parsing: The Solved Problem That Isn't (2011)
Updated (2014-10-24): If you find this article interesting, you may be interested in the follow-up article on an editor for composed programs .
10
Making Rust a Better Fit for Cheri and Other Platforms
Recently, Aria Beingessner published an interesting essay “ Rust’s Unsafe Pointer Types Need An Overhaul ”. There are several parts to this essay, all of which address issues which cause me pain in Rust, and which I would love to see fixed. I want to focus on one issue: Rust’s usize conflates address, data, and object…