Re: gnubol: Anyone actually working on Cobol

[Tim E Josling <TIMJOSLING@prodigy.net>]

My understanding of the realm of possibilities is that parsers are not like other
programs. Assuming that we use a parser generator tool, the way it works is that the
parser generator creates a huge impenetrable table from the grammar. The grammar
cannot then be neatly broken up into components. You can have multiple grammars but
each is quite separate, not modules of one grammar.

The only realistic mthod of providing options is

- have a lookup table to recognise keywords and selectively treat them not as
keywords but as normal user words
- create multiple versions of the parser tables (or PCCTS code) into multiple
executables, using some form of preprocessor in the parser.

There may be a better way. If you are aware of them please share them with us,

Tim Josling

Boris wrote:

> Ok, that was a horrible example.  Let's say instead I wanted a new FUNCTION or
> VERB or something (like being able to do LOG in COBOL), I would like a simple
> extensible way to add the necessary code to do this.  Some of the people I have
> talked to have other ideas for functionality they would like to add, either as
> generally accepted COPY libraries or as extensions to COBOL.


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