On Fri, Sep 24, 2004 at 11:36:43AM -0500, Rod Adams wrote: > Output would be a step by step graph of the internal logic used to match > / not match the string. I'd break the RE up into the same pieces the > Engine does, then show how that subrule matched char a, then char b, but > failed to match c, so it backtracked to a, etc. [...] > The beauty of this solution is, if Perl6 and/or Parrot (not sure which > is the better choice) provides a few hooks into the P6RE Engine, it > would be absolutely authoritative, and could even handle cases where the > rules changed due to module loading. And since I'd expect those hooks to > be in there anyways for other reasons (mainly, letting people muck > around with how they work), I'd suspect all the "Core support" needed > would already be there (I may be wrong.).
Indeed, I would expect that at some point the match object returned by a particular match could provide exactly this sort of information (perhaps in response to a rule option). Indeed, it may be needed in order for the perl 6 compiler to provide useful error messages about why your particular program won't compile (or why it compiled the way it did). I'll keep this in mind as I continue writing the engine--thanks. I'm hoping to have a preliminary implementation available for public consumption in a couple of weeks. Pm
