[wg-camlp4] [Caml-list] Working Group: the future of syntax extensions in OCaml, after camlp4

[Alain Frisch]

On 01/24/2013 05:24 PM, Gerd Stolpmann wrote:
> It's used in the tool, but only for stream parsing. I could also
> distribute the already-preprocessed file (and maybe I'll do so in the
> next release).
>
> Stream parsing is certainly one of the topics to discuss.

I've no idea how widely stream parsing is used.  Has anyone some 
intuition about this?

Stream parsers probably fall in the same category as bitstring or sedlex 
(custom notions of pattern matching).  It seems that stream parsers 
(which I'm not familiar with) require to be able to write expressions 
within "left-hand sides", which might require special support.  Or maybe 
the whole left-hand sides should just be quotations.

Anyway, for a basic infrastructure tool such as ocamlfind, I'd probably 
advocate for a "manual" solution which works out of the box with a basic 
OCaml installation (ocamlyacc or manual top-down parser).  Gerd: does 
that sound reasonable to you?


Alain