On Fri, 2005-01-28 at 13:28, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
> On 28 Jan 2005 12:14:39 +1100
> skaller <skaller@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 2005-01-28 at 08:39, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
> > >
> > > Yes, normally the parser generates a parse tree which is then
> > > passed to the semantic analyser for semantic checking.
> > 
> > Unfortunately this is useless in the common case
> > of needing to parse C.
> 
> I'm happy to take your word for it John, but I'd like to know
> why.

Sure: there are several contexts, but one is that:

	(X)(Y)(Z)

could mean either

	((X)(Y))(Z)

or

	(X)((Y)(Z))

depending on whether Y is a type, in which case (Y)(Z) is a cast,
or an expression, in which case (Y)(Z) is a function application.
The precedences of casts and function applications in C are different.

Function calls bind more tightly than casts, so (int)(f)(x) means
cast the result of f(x) to an int, whereas (g)(a)(b) 
means apply g(a) to b .. assuming g,a,b are not typenames .. :)

Smly 

	(f)(x,y,z)

comma is a separator if f is a function, if f is a typename
its a cast, and (x,y,z) is an expression value 'z'... :)

I guess there is more, and C++ is worse, but this is enough
to be as confused as a one token lookahead context free
parser would be .. :)

-- 
John Skaller, mailto:skaller@users.sf.net
voice: 061-2-9660-0850, 
snail: PO BOX 401 Glebe NSW 2037 Australia
Checkout the Felix programming language http://felix.sf.net