Re: yet another pattern-matching library for Lua

[Brian Hagerty <Brian.Hagerty@...>]

Believe it or not, my first professional job as a programmer was 
programming in Snobol -- a formal pattern matching language.  So 
I welcome the addition of LPeg, which follows in the formal 
footprints of Snobol.

I was hired as a high school grad in the summer of 1978 to write 
Snobol programs to translate (or pre-process to the extent 
possible) source code from IBM machines to the new DEC System 20 
/ TOPS-20 OS machines for a large company that was making the 
IBM to DEC transition.  So I had to write Snobol programs that 
translated from IBM Algol & Fortran language patters to DEC 
Basic & Fortran language patterns.  DEC had just released a new 
"Structured Basic" with module support.

Bravo, Roberto for LPeg -- I'm experimenting with the design of 
a "Design Patterns" formal language that will need an LPeg / 
Snobol-like underpinning.

An old hacker, but a Lua List newbie,

// Brian


On 12/27/06, Roberto Ierusalimschy <roberto@inf.puc-rio.br> wrote:
> I am releasing a prototype of (yet) another pattern-matching
> library for Lua, called LPeg:
>
>   http://www.inf.puc-rio.br/~roberto/lpeg.html
>
> Because the library is rather unconventional, all things in it are
> experimental (even its name).
>
> Unlike most pattern-matching libraries, LPeg is not based on regular
> expressions, but on Parsing Expression Grammars (which in turn are based
> on TDPLs, a technique using top-down parsers with limited backtracking
> developed in the 70s):
> ...
>
> Have fun!
>
> -- Roberto