I'm wondering if it is possible to use Antlr v4 with Xtext?
I know currently (and the near future) Xtext is relying on Antlr v3 because they say they'd have to rewrite all their functions to fit Antlr v4, but I thoughtit might be possible to either add the Antlr v4 library to the buildpath of the Xtext onstead of let it download the v3 itself or if that is not possible if it is possible to generate the Parser with Antlr v4 and then insert the generated java code into Xtext.
Or could you think of another way using v4 with Xtext?
If you are wondering why I want to use v4: As far as I know it automatically handles ambigious grammar (it rewrites the grammar so everything is solvable by the computer) and that is the thing I'mstruggling with the most
Thanks for your help
Krzmbrzl
No, there is no trivial way to plug ANTLR4 into Xtext.
Note that ANTLR4's parsing algorithms are more powerful than those of ANTLR3, but it isn't magic. If you have a highly ambiguous grammar, you might (likely?) still get issues with v4.
I recommend you create a new question and post your Xtext grammar and explain where you're having issues.
Related
I am currently debugging an ABNF grammar. It is currently very big. I am finding it difficult to debug. An IDE or syntax highlighter would be very helpful.
Is there any recommended ABNF grammar IDE or plugin available? Not the BNF ides and plugins. My online research gave me only the BNF plugins which don't recognise ABNF syntax like the slant operator.
I have the same need and have not found an answer. However, I find Lark (https://github.com/lark-parser/lark) very easy to use.
As a workaround, I am developing in Lark's EBNF-derived grammar language. Once the parser is working, hand-translating the Lark grammar to ABNF is relatively straightforward. Unfortunately even ABNF parsers are in short supply, so it's not possible to check the translation for functional correctness. I settle for syntactic correctness using https://tools.ietf.org/tools/bap/abnf.cgi.
If anyone else knows of a Python parser that uses ABNF, I'd love to hear about it.
Can I use the ANTLR Java API to generate the lexer/parser as streams and save them somewhere other than some files?
Also, is there a simple example of using the API to generate the required files from a given grammar?
thanks
I am not 100% sure if I understand your question correctly, but you might want to have a look at https://stackoverflow.com/a/38052798/5068458. This is an in-memory compiler for antlr grammars that generates lexer and parser for a given grammar in-memory. You do not have to do it manually. Code examples are provided there.
Best,
Julian
I have built an antlr v4 grammar for parsing Cobol files. It is tested and fully functional. Now I need to adapt it to be used within a XText project (with unfortunately uses antlrv3). How can I achieve it without backporting my grammar (and loosing all already built Listeners and Visitors)?
After a few thinking about the problem I am wondering if there is a way to generate antlr v3 interface adaptors to use antlr v4 Parser and Lexer. If so, i could "tweak" XText, so it would be using my already built antlrv4 classes through this adaptor interface.
Anyone already had done something like this?
We are currently working on this problem as well. Is there a possibility to look at your grammar file?
I'm trying to use Antlr4.5 to generate a lexer/parser (in C#) for a SQL grammar. What sort of tools would you recommend in order to write the grammar and to test it?
I'm trying antlrworks2 but I find it a bit confusing (can't find a way to enter sample text and see the parse tree - not sure if it's not there or I'm blind or just plain dumb, but I'm pretty sure antlrworks v1 had such a feature).
The Visual Studio VSIX plugin from Sam Harwell looks great but it also confuses the heck out of me, the lexer and parser get generated in the obj\ folder instead of inside the project. Also, it won't help me much when writing the grammar as far as showing me a syntax diagram, letting me try out the grammar with sample text and so on.
I'm pretty confident that antlr is a good way to go, but I'm really not sure about the tooling and the approach I should take when defining and testing my grammar. I would appreciate any suggestions.
My question wasn't brilliant because tooling is pretty independent of the antlr target language, but FWIW I ended up using the free version of IntelliJ IDEA with the antlr plugin. I started liking IntelliJ, it's very good. The antl plugin is also very good for the most part, it a bit rough around the edges here and there, but all the important stuff works very well and in general it's amazingly useful.
I am confused, please do help me out. According to this tutorial, http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/tutorials/os-ecl-commplgin1/index.html, the first thing I need to do is create a parser and lexer. Okay, I've decided to use ANTLR. Now I've checked ANTLR on the net.. But which kind of ANTLR should I use? ANTLR Works / ANTLR V3 / ANTLR V4? I would like to build an editor after this phase, so I hope the generated parser / lexer / etc can be integrated smoothly with it. What I'm trying to do here actually is create an IDE for my language that can plug-in into Eclipse. Thanks. :)
ANTLR (ANother Tool for Language Recognition) is a tool for generating recognizer of various kinds. There are currently 2 versions out there: v4, the latest one, and v3 the previous one which is still in wide use because of the needed runtimes for different language targets (many haven't been ported to v4 yet).
ANTLR Works is a standalone IDE for developing ANTLR recognizers. There are other tools like Eclipse plugins, a VS plugin etc.
If you are going with Eclipse it sounds natural to me to use the Eclipse plugin for developing the parser for your IDE. You should probably first play a bit with other applications, test parser etc. to get an idea how this works.