Analysis of Language Prototyping Toolset

A. M. Borodin, Associate Professor, e-mail: amborodin@acm.org, S. G. Mirvoda, Assistant, e-mail: sergey@mirvoda.com, S. V. Porshnev, Head of Department, Associate Professor, e-mail: sergey_porshnev@mail.ru, Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin, Yekaterinburg

Syntax definition is important stage of programming language design. This stage forms expressive capabilities and language clearance. These capabilities can help programming language to conquer minds of software developers.

This paper discuss state of text programming languages and result of comparative analysis of modern grammar development toolset. Two main technologies of parser generators are compared in view of programming language prototyping. Analysis is based on comparison of two simple grammars. These grammars are designed to implement some structured query language (SQL) features. Though simple this grammars are capable of parsing most of common select SQL statements. Advantages and disadvantages of parser generators technologies are discussed on example of ANTLR and PEG.js.

In addition, this paper describe arguments towards text programming languages. These arguments are given in the context of vertical integration of many different programming languages into technical stack.

Keywords: syntax analisys, context-free grammar, parsing expression grammar, programming language prototyping

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