Compilers - Seeking cheaper alternative to Visual Parse++

Author

Seeking cheaper alternative to Visual Parse++

peter.from.singapore@gmail.com

2007-03-19, 10:16 pm

hi,

does anyone know of a cheaper alternative to Visual Parse++ ? It
need not necessarily be free, but I can't afford $500.

I normally just use Flex/Bison for small parsing projects, but like
the look of the Visual aspect, just for the 'fun factor'.

Similarly, any nice freeware for testing out regular expressions?

Thanks in advance

Chris F Clark

2007-03-21, 5:45 am

> does anyone know of a cheaper alternative to Visual Parse++ ? It
> need not necessarily be free, but I can't afford $500.

If you are just doing "personal" stuff, I'm in the process of
releasing a free version of Yacc++, based loosely(*) on the 2.1
version we shipped. The library will be GPL and the generator while
not yet open source, will be free for non-commercial use (and the
generated code will be GPL). If you want that copy of the generator
for commercial use, we will license it for $250. We will eventually
(within the year) release a version of the generator open source.

You can also get support for the free version for $250/year. Later,
we will have a pay-per-incident program, but the details on that
haven't been worked out. Note, we don't intend to charge for things
we determine are actually our bugs.

*) Loosely in the sense that the generator will be stripped of some of
the post 2.1 features (predicates for example), but the libraries and
generator will otherwise be of recent vintage including all bug fixes.

It will be a few w

s before I get the web-site updated to reflect
this.

Note, Yacc++ doesn't currently have a visual gui like vp++ had. We
had a gui version (on Sun workstations) earlier, but found it not
worth porting.

Hope this helps,
-Chris

****************************************
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Chris Clark Internet : compres@world.std.com
Compiler Resources, Inc. Web Site : http://world.std.com/~compres
23 Bailey Rd voice : (508) 435-5016
Berlin, MA 01503 USA fax : (978) 838-0263 (24 hours)

Alexios Zavras

2007-03-23, 10:05 pm

peter.from.singapore@gmail.com writes:
>Similarly, any nice freeware for testing out regular expressions?

Visual RegExp:
http://laurent.riesterer.free.fr/regexp/

--
-- zvr --
-- +---------------------------+ Alexios Zavras (-zvr-)
| H eytyxia den exei enoxes | zvr@pobox.com
+-----------------------zvr-+

George Neuner

2007-03-26, 8:32 am

On 19 Mar 2007 15:39:40 -0400, peter.from.singapore@gmail.com wrote:

>Similarly, any nice freeware for testing out regular expressions?

Edi Weitz has a nice visual regex tool.
http://weitz.de/regex-coach/

George

Detlef Meyer-Eltz

2007-03-27, 7:15 pm

> does anyone know of a cheaper alternative to Visual Parse++ ?

There is a free version of a parser generater IDE at

http://www.texttransformer.com

With TextTransformer you can create LL(1) parsers with LL(*) look
ahead for conflict resolution. You can execute generated parsers in
the integrated debugger step by step, set breakpoints as well in the
input as in the syntax tree, and so on. For more details see

http://www.texttransformer.com/TechnicalDetails_en.html

> Similarly, any nice freeware for testing out regular expressions?

the integrated Regex-Dialog is free too. With this dialog you can test
whether an expression matches a string and which sub-expression
matches which part of the string. TextTransformer uses POSIX regular
expressions, because these expressions - in contrast to Perl
expressions - prefer the longest match. This is a clear criterion when
the parser has to decide between alternative tokens.

The TextTransformer can't produce only parsers but is used like a
scripting language (subset of c++) specialized in text processing. In
the free version of TextTransformer the use of this interpreter is
restricted. The standard version of TextTransformer costs 98 $.

Only the professional version of TextTransformer produces parsers as
c++ source code. The price for this version still is below of your
limit.

> The problems which are discussed here with VP

don't have to be expected with TextTransformer. Even, if I vanish on
Hawaii one day, TextTransformer can be used as stand-alone
application: the the standard version is not bound to a special PC.
All projects can be executed with the command-line tool without
license. The supporting source code for generated parsers is complete.
There is no additional protected component needed, to run the parser.
In the greatest emergency these parsers even could be extended by
hand.

It's a pity, that so several web-sites for compiler resources still
list VP and aren't reachable or don't react on my mails to include
TextTransformer.

I just released TextTransformer 1.3.1.

Detlef

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