
Parsing with Derivatives
About this video
A Stanford talk by Matthew Might on parsing with derivatives, a new way to write parsers, and why better parsing tools are needed. It discusses language theory and criticizes ad-hoc hand-written parsers.
Why it appears in the archive
Mentioned as a great talk and related reading in threads on parsing techniques.
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From the Hacker News discussion
Off topic, but he also gave a great talk on parsing with derivatives [VIDEO] which was used by the clojure team [LINK]
Read original comment ↗Yes, I'm scanning the original video introducing derivatives[1]. The need for parsing is ubiquitous yet, Never mind CS students, in my experiences a significant number of professional programmers cannot create a basic parser either from scratch or from a standard tool. Edit: The video picks on hand-written c parser. Such a thing isn't necessarily bad IF it's in a formally derived recursive descent parser. But just ad-hoc parsing without being informed by a grammar is pretty much waiting for disaster. [1] [VIDEO]
Read original comment ↗In addition to this, I always think about Matt Might's "Parsing with Derivatives." [1] I'll have to read about flap, as it seems to utilize a lexer based on derivatives. [1]: [VIDEO]
Read original comment ↗