Re: Looking for a nail

[Ian T Zimmerman <itz@transbay.net>]

> Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1999 21:53:53 +0100
> From: Hendrik Tews <tews@irritatie.cs.kun.nl>
> X-Gnus-Article-Number: 99   Tue Jan 26 11:02:09 1999
> 
> 1. Bringing ocamletags to live again. I keep a copy, which compiles
> under 2.01 and reads 2.01 files, but does not create much tags for
> classes. I am willing to through this into the pool (if Francois
> Rouaix agrees).

An etags generator (written in Elisp) is part of current snapshot of
the Emacs subdirectory.  It is exactly as precise/correct as the imenu
generator :-) If you want to see it and can't wait for next release,
write me.

>  2. The yacc and lex interface of ocaml could be a tuned up. Some
> ideas:

>  - use a oo interface for lexers and parsers, this would provide a
> much butter way of adding state information to lexers and parsers
> [cf Christian Lindig's mail "Proposal for new Lexing Module (long)"
> from Mon, 18 Jan 1999] by simply inheriting from the library
> classes.

No.  Sorry, but I don't want to be forced to use classes.  I want to
be able to use Ocaml as a "better ML" only.  This also applies to
Markus' proposal about the standard library.


>  - adding start conditions a la flex to ocamllex

I haven't thought of this really hard, but I bet there is already a
way to do that.  If there isn't, I would think hard again to find a
cleaner, more functional (less stateful) way to do it.  If the current
condition is kept in a global as in flex, that just drops again the
reentrancy that Christian has been working so hard to achieve.

>  - adding a tool for generating perfect hash functions for keyword
> recognition a la gperf; It would be great, if the hash function
> generator could read the set of keywords from annotations in the
> .mly file. I have a rather primitive version, which could be used as
> a starting point.

Yes, I like this one.

-- 
Ian T Zimmerman                        <itz@transbay.net>
I came to the conclusion that what was wrong about the guillotine
was that the condemned man had no chance at all, absolutely none.
Albert Camus, _The Outsider_