Parsing with Derivatives (Yacc is Dead)

Techniques for parsing date to the earliest days of computer science. Despite the discovery and implementation of many efficient, principled techniques for creating parsers, research interest in new methods remains high.

Even in practice, parsers for many systems continue to be written by hand.

Why is so much effort "wasted" on a long-solved problem?

More importantly, what can we do about it?

This talk explores the drawbacks of existing parsing techniques--where and why they are a mismatch for the average developer--and then develops the technical foundation for a solution: parsing with derivatives.

Speaker: Matthew Might, University of Utah

HP Auditorium