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From: johnl@ima.istc.sri.com
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Re: error recovery in yacc
Message-ID: <577@ubu.warwick.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 4-Sep-87 07:12:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: ubu.577
Posted: Fri Sep  4 07:12:21 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 11-Sep-87 07:24:07 EDT
References: <659@ima.ISC.COM>
Sender: johnl@ima.ISC.COM
Reply-To: ...mcvax!ukc!warwick!julia
Organization: Computer Science, Warwick University, Coventry, UK
Lines: 25
Keywords: parsers, error handling
Approved: compilers@ima.UUCP
Summary: version of yacc available

The version of yacc with improved error handling that juha mentioned
is still available, to anyone with a UNIX (System V and bsd 4.1 or more)
source license.
A student here at Warwick, Nick Holloway, and I have been working
on a scheme to produce error messages using the compiler source input
rather than grammar names, automatically: i.e. if you use LEX and
YACC (new versions) to build your translator you automatically get
it to produce error messages like this:
ex.c, line 15: syntax error
	while ((ch = getchar()) != EOF {
......................................^
) inserted. 
We've used it to build the portable C compiler and awk.  I'm writing it up
now but if anyone wants to try out these new tools meanwhile, get in touch
with me.
-- 
Julia Dain 			Tel: 0203-523363
Dept of Computer Science 	uucp: ...mcvax!ukc!warwick!julia
University of Warwick 		janet: julia@uk.ac.warwick.uu
Coventry CV4 7AL UK
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