Parse::Marpa

FIRST THE CAVEATS ...

This is an Alpha release.

It's intended to let people look Marpa over and try it out. Uses
beyond that are risky. While Marpa is in alpha, you certainly don't
want to use it for anything mission-critical or with a serious
deadline.

... THEN THE HYPE

* Parse::Marpa parses any cycle-free context-free grammar.

* Marpa parses any grammar which can be specified in cycle-free
BNF. (A cycle is a case where A produces A -- the BNF version of
an infinite loop.)

* The ban on cycles is not a ban on recursion. Marpa cheerfully
parses left-recursive, right-recursive and any other kind of recursive
grammar, so long as it is cycle-free. Recursion is useful. Cycles
(which are essentially recursion without change) seem to always be
pathological.

* Marpa parses grammars with empty productions. Empty productions
are often important in specifying semantics.

* Ambiguous grammars are a Marpa specialty. They are useful even
if you only want one parse. An ambiguous grammar is often the easiest
and most sensible way to express a language. Human languages are
ambiguous. We listen and pull out the parse that makes most sense.
Marpa allows the user to prioritize rules so that a preferred parse
comes up first.

* Marpa can also return all the parses of an ambiguous grammar.

* Marpa incorporates the latest academic research on Earley's
algorithm, combining it with LR(0) precomputation.

* Marpa's own innovations include predictive and ambiguous lexing.

INSTALLATION

To install this module, run the following commands:

    perl Makefile.PL
    make
    make test
    make install


SUPPORT AND DOCUMENTATION

After installing, you can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

    perldoc Parse::Marpa

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

Copyright (C) 2007 Jeffrey Kegler

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.