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This is a list of notable lexer generators and parser generators for various language classes.

Regular languages

Regular languages are a category of languages (sometimes termed Chomsky Type 3) which can be matched by a state machine (more specifically, by a deterministic finite automaton or a nondeterministic finite automaton) constructed from a regular expression. In particular, a regular language can match constructs like "A follows B", "Either A or B", "A, followed by zero or more instances of B", but cannot match constructs which require consistency between non-adjacent elements, such as "some instances of A followed by the same number of instances of B", and also cannot express the concept of recursive "nesting" ("every A is eventually followed by a matching B"). A classic example of a problem which a regular grammar cannot handle is the question of whether a given string contains correctly nested parentheses. (This is typically handled by a Chomsky Type 2 grammar, also termed a context-free grammar.)

Deterministic context-free languages

Context-free languages are a category of languages (sometimes termed Chomsky Type 2) which can be matched by a sequence of replacement rules, each of which essentially maps each non-terminal element to a sequence of terminal elements and/or other nonterminal elements. Grammars of this type can match anything that can be matched by a regular grammar, and furthermore, can handle the concept of recursive "nesting" ("every A is eventually followed by a matching B"), such as the question of whether a given string contains correctly nested parentheses. The rules of Context-free grammars are purely local, however, and therefore cannot handle questions that require non-local analysis such as "Does a declaration exist for every variable that is used in a function?". To do so technically would require a more sophisticated grammar, like a Chomsky Type 1 grammar, also termed a context-sensitive grammar. However, parser generators for context-free grammars often support the ability for user-written code to introduce limited amounts of context-sensitivity. (For example, upon encountering a variable declaration, user-written code could save the name and type of the variable into an external data structure, so that these could be checked against later variable references detected by the parser.)

The deterministic context-free languages are a proper subset of the context-free languages which can be efficiently parsed by deterministic pushdown automata.

Parsing expression grammars, deterministic Boolean grammars

This table compares parser generators with parsing expression grammars, deterministic Boolean grammars.

General context-free, conjunctive, or Boolean languages

This table compares parser generator languages with a general context-free grammar, a conjunctive grammar, or a Boolean grammar.

Context-sensitive grammars

This table compares parser generators with context-sensitive grammars.

See also

• Compiler-compiler
• List of program transformation systems
• Comparison of regular expression engines

Notes

References

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2. http://www.colm.net/open-source/ragel/
3. "Adaptive LL(*) Parsing: The Power of Dynamic Analysis" (PDF). Terence Parr. Retrieved 2016-04-03.
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6. "Beaver - a LALR Parser Generator". beaver.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 2023-09-16.
7. Newton, Jim E.; Demaille, Akim; Verna, Didier (2016-05-09). "Type-Checking of Heterogeneous Sequences in Common Lisp" (PDF). Proceedings of the 9th European Lisp Symposium on European Lisp Symposium. ELS2016. Kraków, Poland: European Lisp Scientific Activities Association: 13–20. ISBN 978-2-9557474-0-7.
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13. Thiemann, Peter; Neubauer, Matthias (2004-12-31). "Parameterized LR Parsing". Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science. Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on Language Descriptions, Tools, and Applications (LDTA 2004). 110: 115–132. doi:10.1016/j.entcs.2004.06.007. ISSN 1571-0661.
14. Gray, Robert W.; Levi, Steven P.; Heuring, Vincent P.; Sloane, Anthony M.; Waite, William M. (1992). "Eli: a complete, flexible compiler construction system". Communications of the ACM. 35 (2): 121–130. doi:10.1145/129630.129637. ISSN 0001-0782. S2CID 5121773.
15. Owens, Scott; Flatt, M.; Shivers, O.; McMullan, Benjamin (2004-10-01). "Lexer and Parser Generators in Scheme" (PDF). Scheme 2004: Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop on Scheme and Functional Programming.
16. ^ Areias, Hugo; Simões, Alberto; Henriques, P.; Cruz, Daniela Carneiro da (2010-09-01). "Parser generation in Perl : an overview and available tools" (PDF). {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
17. Volkman, Victor (2007-07-19). "Let Your Parser Go for the GOLD". Developer.com. Retrieved 2023-11-04.
18. "Parsing in C#: All the Tools and Libraries You Can Use (Part 2) - DZone". dzone.com. Retrieved 2023-11-04.
19. Ortin, Francisco; Quiroga, Jose; Rodriguez-Prieto, Oscar; Garcia, Miguel (2022-03-03). "An empirical evaluation of Lex/Yacc and ANTLR parser generation tools". PLOS ONE. 17 (3): e0264326. Bibcode:2022PLoSO..1764326O. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0264326. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 8893623. PMID 35239695.
20. Enseling, Oliver (2000-12-29). "Build your own languages with JavaCC". InfoWorld. Retrieved 2023-11-04.
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23. "The Lemon Parser Generator". sqlite.org. Retrieved 2023-11-30.
24. "The Lezer Parser System".
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26. "Sponsoring the Lezer parser system | Tines". www.tines.com. 2022-03-11. Retrieved 2023-12-06.
27. "An LR(*) parser generator for C++".
28. "Racc". i.loveruby.net. Retrieved 2021-11-26.
29. "Racc Grammar File Reference". i.loveruby.net. Retrieved 2021-11-26.
30. "The SLK Parser Generator supports C, C++, Java, JavaScript, and C#, optional backtracking, free".
31. http://www.slkpg.tech/license.txt
32. "SLY (Sly Lex Yacc)".
33. "Tree-Sitter - An incremental parsing system for programming tools".
34. "Parse - Compile time (LR) type safe parser generator for C++". GitHub. 30 December 2021.
35. Maintained fork of PEG.js
36. taocpp/PEGTL, The Art of C++, 2024-03-14, retrieved 2024-03-16
37. "Parrot: Grammar Engine". The Parrot Foundation. 2011. PGE rules provide the full power of recursive descent parsing and operator precedence parsing.
38. "Decl Summary (Bison 3.8.1)". www.gnu.org.

External links

• The Catalog of Compiler Construction Tools
• Open Source Parser Generators in Java

• Parser generators
• Parsing algorithms
• Software comparisons