Traditional parser-generators and DFDL both describe a formal language.

Tools like Yacc/Bison/Antlr/JavaCC use BNF or EBNF to describe how to
a) extract tokens from the data stream
b) create an AST from the tokens
The language is explicit and the tree structure of the AST is implicit.

DFDL uses XML Schema to describe the tree structure of the AST, and uses XSD annotations to describe the physical representations of the logical elements.
The tree structure is explicit but the language rules are implicit.

regards,

Tim Kimber, DFDL Team,
Hursley, UK
Internet:  kimbert@uk.ibm.com
Tel. 01962-816742  
Internal tel. 37246742




From:        "Garriss Jr., James P." <jgarriss@mitre.org>
To:        "dfdl-wg@ogf.org" <dfdl-wg@ogf.org>,
Date:        21/11/2013 18:21
Subject:        [DFDL-WG] DFDL's approach vs tradition parser-generators
Sent by:        dfdl-wg-bounces@ogf.org

---

Traditional parser-generators and DFDL generate parsers.  At a high level, how would you summarize the difference in approaches between these two?

TIA
 
 
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