Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ncar!boulder!stan!ddv
From: ddv@Solbourne.COM (Dan DeVries)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: c parser wanted
Message-ID: <884@stan.Solbourne.COM>
Date: 27 Apr 89 01:47:25 GMT
References: <7974@june.cs.washington.edu>
Reply-To: ddv@Solbourne.com (Dan DeVries)
Organization: Solbourne Computer Inc., Longmont, Colorado
Lines: 19

In article <7974@june.cs.washington.edu> franz@cs.washington.edu (Franz G. Amador) writes:
>Does anyone have or know of source for a parser/pretty-printer for c
>that reads in the c and just spits it back out?  I'd much prefer that
>it be based upon a nice yacc grammar than it be hand-coded, which is
>why I'd rather not use the source for Unix's indent command.
>

To write a pretty printer that completely syntax checks C is horribly
wasteful.  Only certain constructs cause indentation and that is all thea
a pretty printer should recognize.  This is important because a pretty printer
is an excellent debug tool when the C parser doesn't help. (i.e. where did
I leave out that } ).  The last pretty printer I wrote took 4 hours and
only recognized { } for while if repeat and a few others.

Forget Yacc.  The source for yacc would be MUCH more complicated than a 
simple scanner required for prettyPrint.

(I know, flame away.  I just think that Yacc has it's place and its not
 for every job)