[pklausler]

Fortran compilers did go through a phase when table-driven parsers were used, but it had the disadvantage of needing complicated lexers and statement classifiers that rely on semantic information. Fortran’s a hard language to parse, given its lack of reserved words, optional spaces, and many ambiguities.

The f18 compiler’s parser uses parser combinations to construct a backtracking recursive descent parser that builds a parse tree for the whole source file before doing any semantic analysis. This approach allows good error recovery without having to revert any updates to the symbol table.

[kragen]

that's an interesting approach! though probably not applicable to c and c++

i assume that by 'parser combinations' you mean parser combinators

what i meant about fortran is that the first fortran compiler didn't use a parser generator