[ANNOUNCE] Alpha release of Menhir, an LR(1) parser generator for ocaml

[Francois Pottier <Francois.Pottier@inria.fr>]

Dear Caml users,

We are proud to announce the first release of Menhir. Menhir compiles LR(1)
grammar specifications to OCaml code.

Menhir is 90% compatible with ocamlyacc. That is, existing ocamlyacc grammar
specifications are accepted and compiled by Menhir; the resulting parsers run
and produce correct parse trees, except they produce incorrect position
information, because none of the functionality of module Parsing is
supported. Porting a grammar specification from ocamlyacc to Menhir requires
replacing all calls to the Parsing module with new keywords.

Why switch from ocamlyacc to Menhir? In short,

 * Menhir offers parameterized nonterminal symbols as well as a library of
   standard definitions, including options, sequences, and lists. It also
   offers limited support for EBNF syntax.

 * ocamlyacc accepts LALR(1) grammars; Menhir accepts LR(1) grammars, thus
   avoiding certain artificial conflicts.

 * Menhir explains conflicts in terms of the grammar, not (only) in terms of
   the automaton.

 * Menhir allows grammar specifications to be split over multiple files. It
   also allows several grammars to share a single set of tokens.

 * Menhir produces reentrant parsers.

 * Menhir is able to produce parsers that are parameterized by Ocaml modules.

 * ocamlyacc requires semantic values to be referred to via keywords: $1, $2,
   and so on. Menhir allows semantic values to be explicitly named.

 * Menhir's error and warning messages are usually more numerous and better
   than ocamlyacc's.

A more detailed comparison between ocamlyacc and Menhir appears in Menhir's
documentation.

This is an ALPHA-quality release, so there certainly remain a lot of bugs
to iron out. Nevertheless, we encourage intrepid testers to have a look
and send suggestions and bug reports our way. Thanks for your attention!

Menhir requires ocaml 3.09. The source distribution and the documentation can
be found at

  http://pauillac.inria.fr/~fpottier/menhir/menhir-20051212.tar.gz
  http://pauillac.inria.fr/~fpottier/menhir/manual.pdf

-- 
François Pottier and Yann Régis-Gianas
{Francois.Pottier,Yann.Regis-Gianas}@inria.fr
http://pauillac.inria.fr/~fpottier/
http://pauillac.inria.fr/~regisgia/