[SavantIdiot]

Like grandma used to say: "There's nothing combinators can't solve. Except consumption. Rest in peace Grandpa Neddie."

I'm dense: what's a combinator?

[a_lost_needle]

A functional programming technique that allow you to declaratively define your language when using parsers as values. If you have a good functional language implementation, the code look very similar to someone able to read BNF. And then you run it, and get out an AST the back end.

edit: Forgot partial application. Not strictly required, but super handy.