Talks to Watch

Parsing with Derivatives

13K views · Jun 3, 2011 · 1:13:10 · 1 HN recommender · 3 mentions · discussed 2016–2023

A Stanford talk by Matthew Might on parsing with derivatives, a new way to write parsers, and why better parsing tools are needed. It discusses language theory and criticizes ad-hoc hand-written parsers.

Why Hacker News points people here: Mentioned as a great talk and related reading in threads on parsing techniques.

“he also gave a great talk on parsing with derivatives”HN comment, 2018

What Hacker News said 3

RecommendscellularmitosisSep 2018

“he also gave a great talk on parsing with derivatives”

Great talk on parsing with derivatives.

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Off topic, but he also gave a great talk on parsing with derivatives this video which was used by the clojure team link

in “A Battle Plan for a War on Rare Diseases: Conversation with Matt Might” · view on HN
Cites itjoe_the_userJun 2016

“The video picks on hand-written c parser.”

Introduces parsing with derivatives and critiques ad-hoc parsing.

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Yes, I'm scanning the original video introducing derivatives[1]. The need for parsing is ubiquitous yet, Never mind CS students, in my experiences a significant number of professional programmers cannot create a basic parser either from scratch or from a standard tool. Edit: The video picks on hand-written c parser. Such a thing isn't necessarily bad IF it's in a formally derived recursive descent parser. But just ad-hoc parsing without being informed by a grammar is pretty much waiting for disaster. [1] this video

in “On the Complexity and Performance of Parsing with Derivatives” · view on HN
Cites itThatGeoGuyMay 2023

“I always think about Matt Might's”

Related work on parsing with derivatives.

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In addition to this, I always think about Matt Might's "Parsing with Derivatives." [1] I'll have to read about flap, as it seems to utilize a lexer based on derivatives. [1]: this video

in “Why Split Lexing and Parsing into Two Separate Phases?” · view on HN