On Aug 16, 2012, at 6:13 PM, Ralph Boland wrote: > I read a paper once (at the University of New Brunswick (Canada)) > library in which the grammar for a language was used to construct a > data compressor for syntaxly correct programs. The output was a > compressed form of a parse/syntax tree with comments and white space > included. Once decompressed, the tree could be used to reconstruct > the source. I don't know if a compressed syntax tree would be very useful for > programming tasks but it could be used to compress Smalltalk's source > file and changes file. This assumes the time saved by filing in > smaller chucks of programs segments would greater than the cost of > decompression.
do you have the reference? One guy told me and in Oberon or something like that the ast was compressed long time ago. > I am designing and planning to implement a parser generator tool > (yes, another parser generator tool, something the world really needs ;-) ). This is another questions :) Why don't you want to improve petitparser? > If/when this project is complete perhaps I'll give this compressed AST > idea a try. > > Convincing the Squeak/Pharo world that it should be used is another matter > entirely. Since marcus PhD we want to have AST stored in the system, we just need to have a compressed version of AST to make an experiment and measure. Stef > > Ralph Boland >
