Book "Pro Perl Parsing"

brian42miller has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

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Re: Book "Pro Perl Parsing" by marto (Cardinal) on Jan 14, 2009 at 18:13 UTC
Brian, The module has ten outstanding reported problems, most are years old. Check out Parse::Flex and see if this module meets your requirements: "Parse::Flex works similar to Parse::Lex, but it uses XS for faster performance." Hope this helps, Martin	[reply]
Re: Book "Pro Perl Parsing" by holli (Abbot) on Jan 14, 2009 at 18:18 UTC
There's a great chapter (8) about lexing and parsing in Higher Order Perl (Mark Jason Dominus). Freely (not pirated) available here. holli, /regexed monk/	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Book "Pro Perl Parsing" by jeffa (Bishop) on Jan 14, 2009 at 18:13 UTC
Without seeing the example, it's hard to say if there is a better module. That book doesn't look very good and it's already 4 years old. The module itself has a copyright date of 1999 -- not sure if that is accurate, but it is a good indication that it is not being actively updated. Maybe if you explain what you are trying to accomplish or learn, this would help us answer your question better. I personally like Parse::RecDescent myself. jeffa L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L-- -R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B-- H---H---H---H---H---H--- (the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)	[reply]
Re^2: Book "Pro Perl Parsing" by brian42miller (Sexton) on Jan 14, 2009 at 19:41 UTC
In general I am attempting to learn techniques of parsing language base files. Well, exactly, I want to extract structure and other information from programs written in 'e' (by Verisity, now Cadence) and vhdl. Seeing that I don't really know much about the subject I noticed this book and though, wow, just what I needed. What do you do, crush my hopes and aspirations. Now what am I going to do, shuffle off this mortal coil;) Do you have any suggestions for good information sources? My real problem is that I don't really know much about what is required to parse (extract information) a real language. thanks Brian	[reply]
Re^3: Book "Pro Perl Parsing" by Not_a_Number (Prior) on Jan 14, 2009 at 20:05 UTC
Don't despair! A quick CPAN search for 'vhdl' yields Hardware::Vhdl::Lexer, which, even if it doesn't do quite what you want, might provide some useful pointers if you look at the source code. BTW, I read 'Pro Perl Parsing' some time ago, and it didn't leave any lasting impression on me (other than the fact that it was the first Perl book that I had read with absolutely no humour in it!)	[reply]
Re^3: Book "Pro Perl Parsing" by brian42miller (Sexton) on Jan 14, 2009 at 20:20 UTC
Yes, I had seen the VHDL parser. It is the 'e' language (by Verisity, now Cadence) that is really my problem. Is there any way to know if the module has been abandon, besides looking at the bug reports? Thanks	[reply]