First of all thanks for the advice!

This looks like a classical application of a recursive descending parser that I introduced in RFC: Parsing with perl - Regexes and beyond.

I have difficulty understanding the article. In my humble opinion it is rather theoretical. Maybe I am not worthy ;-)

In fact I think I wrote a similar parser for a SoPW the other, see Design hints for a file processor. Since some of your tokens stretch multiple files you need a slightly more intelligent tokenizer though.

The "slightly" is an understatement. Some of my nightmare examples to illustrate the point:

In general: KEYWORD = value with value being of a certain type. The comments should be ignored and are not part of the value.

/* A 2-dimensional sequence as the value is being called in ODL */
KEYWORD = ((1,2) (3,4) (5,8) /* some comment */
            9,11))

[download]

/* A set as the value is being called in ODL */
KEYWORD = { RED, BLUE, /* some comment */
            GREEN, HAZEL }

[download]

/* A text string spanning multiple lines */
KEYWORD = "some text /* not a comment but part of the value! */
          more text
          even more text" /* this is again a comment*/

[download]

In reply to Re^2: Writing an ODL parser? by dHarry
in thread Writing an ODL parser? by dHarry

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