The author of ANTLR, Terence Parr, is a professor at the University of San Francisco and is the inventor of the LL(*) parsing strategy.
This might make you think that ANTLR rests on the same academic foundations as many other tools created in universities and given scary names like “LL(*) Parsing Strategy.” Not true.
From “The Definitive ANTLR Reference”:
In particular, Part III provides the only thorough explanation available anywhere of ANTLR’s LL(*) parsing strategy.
Read: There are few academic publications on ANTLR and seemingly none on its underlying technology.
This isn’t normally a problem. Most useful software is not built on academic foundations. However, ANTLR is positioned more than most to look “academic”. It’s not.
May 13, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Actually, I’ve just not gotten around to writing up the academic paper. I am working on another book and then need to fix a bunch of stuff in the software. You’ll note that ANTLR provides the foundation for most of the latest work in parsing such as PEG (parser expression grammar).
May 14, 2009 at 8:08 am
@Terence: That’s good news—I’m looking forward to the paper!