Here's a bit of a kludge to use alternate start rules in a single Parse::Yapp grammar. If someone knows a better way, please clue me in. This fully functional snippet also shows how to put all of the necessary P::Y ingredients into a single file for easy debugging.
#!perl -w use strict; my $grammar = <<''; %% greeting : hi | hello ; farewell : bye | goodbye ; %% # create two parsers with same grammar, different start rules my $g_parser = MyParser->new($grammar,'greeting'); my $f_parser = MyParser->new($grammar,'farewell'); die if $g_parser->parse('bye'); # 'bye' is not a greeting die if $f_parser->parse('hi'); # 'hi' is not a farewell print "ok!\n" if $g_parser->parse('hi'); # 'hi' is a greeting print "ok!\n" if $f_parser->parse('bye'); # 'bye' is a farewell package MyParser; use Parse::Yapp; sub new { my ($class,$grammar,$start,$debug)=@_; %Parser:: = () if defined %Parser::; if ($start){ $grammar =~ s/^%start.*$/%start $start/m or $grammar =~ s/^(%%\n)/%start $start\n$1/m; } my $py = new Parse::Yapp(input => $grammar); eval $py->Output; die "ERROR IN GRAMMAR\n$@\n" if $@; return bless {parser => new Parser, debug => $debug}, $class; } sub lexer { for(shift->YYData->{INPUT}) { s/^(\S+)// and return($1,$1) } } sub parse { my $self = shift; my $parser = $self->{parser}; $parser->YYData->{INPUT}=shift; my $rv = $parser->YYParse ( yylex => \&lexer , yyerror => sub{} # we just need a yes or no , yydebug => $self->{debug} # set this to 0x0F for a good time ); return undef if $parser->YYNberr; return $rv; } __END__