Re: SableCC 3.0 Whishlist request

[Patrick LAM <plam@sable.mcgill.ca>]

On Wed, 2 Apr 2003, Kyle F. Downey wrote:

> I'll add a maybe-impossible wishlist item: grammar inheritance. Maybe a
> look at how XML Schema handled and failed to handle this would be useful.
> For instance, I've been working on an IDL grammar. There are numerous
> dialects of IDL like Microsoft's, CORBA's, even Mozilla's (XPIDL). Having
> an "abstract grammar" for what they have in common and then
> "specialization grammars" that inherit/override (adding new tokens,
> redefining productions--especially in terms of inherited once--etc.) would
> be very nice. It also would be a good match to Java: an OO grammar for an
> OO language.

Andrew Myers' Polyglot project is an attempt to provide extensible
grammars.  Unfortunately, their implementation extends JavaCup grammars,
but the same techniques could work on other compilers too:

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/andru/papers/polyglot.pdf

pat