The BNF Converter

What is the BNF Converter?

The BNF Converter (bnfc) is a compiler construction tool generating a compiler front-end from a Labelled BNF grammar. It is currently able to generate C, C++, C#, Haskell, Java, and OCaml, as well as XML representations.

Given a Labelled BNF grammar the tool produces:

• an abstract syntax implementation
• a case skeleton for the abstract syntax in the same language
• an Alex, JLex, or Flex lexer generator file
• a Happy, CUP, or Bison parser generator file
• a pretty-printer as a Haskell/Java/C++/C module
• a Latex file containing a readable specification of the language

More information: http://bnfc.digitalgrammars.com/

Requirements

Everything needed to build bnfc is available in the haskell platform.

On Debian, you can install the dependencies as follows

sudo apt-get install haskell-platform

On Fedora:

yum install haskell-platform

Then proceed with the installation.

Installation

To install bnfc from git:

git clone https://github.com/BNFC/bnfc.git
cd bnfc/source
cabal install

To download the latest realease, see the bnfc website: http://bnfc.digitalgrammars.com/

Documentation

https://bnfc.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

Run tests

Here is how to build and run the different test suites for bnfc.

cabal sandbox init # Cabal >= 1.18 only
cabal install --only-dependencies --enable-tests
cabal configure --enable-tests
cabal test

Contribute

• Issue Tracker: https://github.com/BNFC/bnfc/issues
• Source Code: https://github.com/BNFC/bnfc

Support

If you are having issues, please let us know. We have a mailing list located at: bnfc-dev@googlegroups.com

License

The project is licensed under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2.