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Lance Pollard edited this page Jun 11, 2014
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7 revisions
To make an easy to read and manipulate grammar for every major language throughout history.
If this is done, we'll be able to:
create super powerful text editors
implement robust (and simple) syntax highlighters that we have full control over
implement code completion
whip together your own programming language, building off of one of the others or starting your own from scratch (and get syntax highlighting along with it)
convert one language into another (if a grammar for assembly was created, potentially even compile a language directly to assembly or machine code)
build all kinds of other tools around the languages, for linting, optimizing, extending, whatever
The goal is to create a sort of simple API for defining the grammar rules for a language, so it's easy to understand, to build tools around, and to create custom languages from.
Each grammar is defined in JavaScript, so it's super easy to do. Then we can just build a compiler that takes a grammar and outputs something like a BNF or PEG grammar text file for fun, but those are pretty obtuse to use directly.