Question

In all of the standard specifications for programming languages, why is it that you cannot directly translate the lexical analysis/layout to a grammar that is ready to be plugged into and working?

I can understand that it would be impossible to adapt it for the likes of Flex/Bison, Lex/Yacc, Antlr and so on, and furthermore to make it readable for humans to understand.

But surely, if it is a standard specification, it should be a simple copy/paste the grammar layout and instead end up with loads of shift/reduce errors as a result which can back fire and hence, produce an inaccurate grammar.

In other words, why did they not make it readable for use by a grammar/parser tool straight-away?

Maybe it is a debatable thing I don’t know…

Thanks,
Best regards,
Tom.

Answer 1

In other words, why did they not make
it readable for use by a
grammar/parser tool straight-away?

Standards documents are intended to be readable by humans, not parser generators.