Yacc - Grammar language

Yacc, aka Yet Another Compiler-Compiler, is a grammar language created in 1975 by Stephen C. Johnson.

#95on PLDB

49Years Old

11kRepos

Yacc (Yet Another Compiler-Compiler) is a computer program for the Unix operating system. It is a Look Ahead Left-to-Right (LALR) parser generator, generating a parser, the part of a compiler that tries to make syntactic sense of the source code, specifically a LALR parser, based on an analytic grammar written in a notation similar to Backus–Naur Form (BNF). Yacc itself used to be available as the default parser generator on most Unix systems, though it has since been supplanted as the default by more recent, largely compatible, programs.. Read more on Wikipedia...

Tags: grammarLanguage, compiler
There are at least 11,041 Yacc repos on GitHub
Yacc is written in C
The Google BigQuery Public Dataset GitHub snapshot shows 10k users using Yacc in 14k repos on GitHub
Yacc on HOPL
Yacc appears in the TIOBE Index
GitHub supports syntax highlighting for Yacc
See also: (13 related languages) Unix, B, C, Bison, OCaml, RATFOR, Ada, Pascal, Java, Python, Ruby, Go, Common Lisp
Read more about Yacc on the web: 1.
67 PLDB concepts link to Yacc: Ad-hoc, ana, aplette, Bash, beef-lang, Blox, Boomerang Decompiler, C3, Carbon, Click, Cognate, cor, Crema, Cryptol, duro, eC, Eiffel, Fancy, Filebench WML, FLEX, Frege, Futhark, GAP, Gforth, GHC, haste, HHVM, hobbes, invokator, JFlex, Jison, jq, JSON Query Language, kitlang, Koka, latino, Lemon, Linux, mgmt, Mudlle, NCAR Command Language, nesC, never, Open Shading Language, OpenComal, orca, Parsers, Perl, PHP, GNU Poke, PostgreSQL, Potion, PROMETHEUS, PureScript, RamdaScript, Recfiles, RicScript, Ruby, shill, Slony, solid, SQLite, Streem, t2b, VLC, VSXu, YARA

Example from Linguist:

%{
/*
 * Test program: Advanced Calculator
 * by Zhao Cheng 5/20/2012
 */
%}

%union {
    double val;    /* For returning numbers.  */
    symrec *tptr;  /* For returning symbol-table pointers.  */
}

%token <val> NUMBER
%token <tptr> VAR FNCT

%right '='
%left '+' '-'
%left '*' '/'
%right '^'
%left NEG

%type <val> expression

%{
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <math.h>
#include "calc.h"  /* Contains definition of `symrec'.  */
%}

%%

statement
    : /* empty */ { exit(0); }
    | expression { printf("= %f\n", $1); }
    ;

expression
    : NUMBER { $ = $1; }
    | VAR    { $ = $1->value.var; }
    | VAR '=' expression        { $ = $3; $1->value.var = $3; }
    | FNCT '(' expression ')'   { $ = (*($1->value.fnctptr))($3); }
    | expression '*' expression { $ = $1 * $3; }
    | expression '/' expression { $ = $1 / $3; }
    | expression '+' expression { $ = $1 + $3; }
    | expression '-' expression { $ = $1 - $3; }
    | expression '^' expression { $ = pow($1, $3); }
    | '-' expression %prec NEG  { $ = -$2; }
    | '(' expression ')'        { $ = $2; }
    ;

%%
struct init
{
    char const *fname;
    double (*fnct) (double);
};
struct init const arith_fncts[] =
{
    "sin"   , sin   ,
    "asin"  , asin  ,
    "cos"   , cos   ,
    "acos"  , acos  ,
    "tan"   , tan   ,
    "atan"  , atan  ,
    "ceil"  , ceil  ,
    "floor" , floor ,
    "abs"   , fabs  ,
    "ln"    , log   ,
    "log"   , log10 ,
    "lg"    , log2  ,
    "exp"   , exp   ,
    "sqrt"  , sqrt  ,
    0       , 0
};
/* The symbol table: a chain of `struct symrec'.  */
symrec *sym_table;
/* Put arithmetic functions in table.  */
void init_table (void)
{
    int i;
    symrec *ptr;
    for (i = 0; arith_fncts[i].fname != 0; i++) {
        ptr = putsym (arith_fncts[i].fname, FNCT);
        ptr->value.fnctptr = arith_fncts[i].fnct;
    }
}
int main()
{
    init_table();
    while (yyparse() == 0)
        ;
    return 0;
}
void yyerror(const char *msg)
{
    fprintf(stderr, "Error: %s\n", msg);
}
symrec *
putsym (char const *sym_name, int sym_type)
{
  symrec *ptr;
  ptr = (symrec *) malloc (sizeof (symrec));
  ptr->name = (char *) malloc (strlen (sym_name) + 1);
  strcpy (ptr->name,sym_name);
  ptr->type = sym_type;
  ptr->value.var = 0; /* Set value to 0 even if fctn.  */
  ptr->next = (struct symrec *)sym_table;
  sym_table = ptr;
  return ptr;
}
symrec *
getsym (char const *sym_name)
{
  symrec *ptr;
  for (ptr = sym_table; ptr != (symrec *) 0;
       ptr = (symrec *)ptr->next)
    if (strcmp (ptr->name,sym_name) == 0)
      return ptr;
  return 0;
}

Language features

Feature	Supported	Example	Token
MultiLine Comments	✓	/* A comment */	/* */
Comments	✓	// A comment
Line Comments	✓	// A comment	//
Semantic Indentation	X