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Feature request



Here's a feature request for the next version of SableCC.. implementing
this is probably really easy, or else really hard... :-)

Currently, one parses the input like this:

  Parser p;
  Start topNode;

  p = new Parser(new Lexer(input));
  topNode = p.parse();

It would be nice if you could parse any arbitrary other node besides
Start, by doing something like this:

  Parser p;
  PSomeArbitraryProduction node;

  p = new Parser(new Lexer(input), PSomeArbitraryProduction.class);
  node = p.parse();

The idea being that you throw away all of the grammar except for what
could possibly be in a tree with top node PSomeArbitraryProduction.
So the parser would parse a PSomeArbitraryProduction, followed by EOF,
and then finish.

In my application, for example, stuff gets written to a file and needs
to be read in again later. For example, you write out strings into a
file like this:

  string1="This is a \"doubly quoted\" string."

You want to parse everything after the equals sign as a string
token in a way that's consistent with the rest of the application.
So you might send just that input to the parser, and get a PString
node back.

I'd be interested in what the right parser strategy for implementing
this might be. Would you just create two new parser states for each node
type? E.g.:

   . node EOF

and

   node . EOF

These states would never be entered during a "complete" parse.

-Archie

___________________________________________________________________________
Archie Cobbs   *   Whistle Communications, Inc.  *   http://www.whistle.com