This page is part of the web mail archives of SRFI 110 from before July 7th, 2015. The new archives for SRFI 110 contain all messages, not just those from before July 7th, 2015.
Mark H Weaver: > However, _if_ turns out that a non-LL(1) grammar would be easier to > understand, then I think that's what should be used in the actual > specification. If it turns out that it's *MUCH* easier, that would make sense. At this point we don't know if *this* grammar will be much easier to understand or not. However, non-LL(1) grammars are more difficult to implement with recursive descent parsers (you have to implement all those transformations). As far as I know practically EVERYONE implements Lisp readers (including Scheme) using recursive descent. So I think it has to MUCH easier to justify things. > If you disagree, then consider this: if you were reading the > specification of a traditional infix language... The usual transformations to turn a grammar into LL(1) break down rules into a much larger set of rules (often with funky nulls). In this case, we only have a few rules, so it's not clear to me that a non-LL(1) grammar would be that much simpler. It *might* be. If anyone has ideas to "reverse transform" our existing grammar into something simpler, LL(1) or not, I'd love to know! --- David A. Wheeler