Parser generators

Yacc (Yet Another Compiler-Compiler) is a computer program for the Unix operating system developed by Stephen C. Johnson. It is a lookahead left-to-right rightmost derivation (LALR) parser generator, generating a LALR parser (the part of a compiler that tries to make syntactic sense of the source code) based on a formal grammar, written in a notation similar to Backus–Naur form (BNF). Yacc is supplied as a standard utility on BSD and AT&T Unix. GNU-based Linux distributions include Bison, a forward-compatible Yacc replacement.

In computer science, a compiler-compiler or compiler generator is a programming tool that creates a parser, interpreter, or compiler from some form of formal description of a programming language and machine.

general-purpose parser generator

In computer-based language recognition, ANTLR (pronounced antler), or ANother Tool for Language Recognition, is a parser generator that uses a LL(*) algorithm for parsing. ANTLR is the successor to the Purdue Compiler Construction Tool Set (PCCTS), first developed in 1989, and is under active development. Its maintainer is Professor Terence Parr of the University of San Francisco.

JavaCC (Java Compiler Compiler) is an open-source parser generator and lexical analyzer generator written in the Java programming language.

Ragel (IPA: ) is a finite-state machine compiler and a parser generator. Initially Ragel supported output for C, C++ and Assembly source code, later expanded to support several other languages including Objective-C, D, Go, Ruby, and Java. Additional language support is also in development. It supports the generation of table or control flow driven state machines from regular expressions and/or state charts and can also build lexical analysers via the longest-match method. Ragel specifically targets text parsing and input validation.

SableCC is an open-source compiler generator (or interpreter generator) in Java. Stable version is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). Rewritten version 4 is licensed under Apache License 2.0.

compiler-compiler