Recursive Descent Parsers

[cjohnson]

I think I'm going to write a simple parser/interpreter for a small language as a project in my languages class. My professor said he discouraged the use of parser generators, and suggested a recursive descent parser instead. Can anyone point me to information about these or give me an overview of them. I looked on google a little big, but didn't find much that was helpful. Thanks in advance.

[EverlastingGod]

Basically you have a function for each non-terminal. That function matches terminals and calls the other non-terminal functions to parse them.

Ex: A, B, C are non-terminals, d, e, f are terminals

A -> B d e f C

Your A function would be something like:

void A()
{
  B();
  match(d);
  match(e);
  match(f);
  C();
}

Sorry, I know that wasn't a good explanation.

[Strogian]

http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/%7Erob.../webnotes.html

Check out the notes and the links at the bottom. I got up to the LR parsers before I got confused.