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diff --git a/src/VBox/Devices/EFI/Firmware/BaseTools/Source/C/VfrCompile/Pccts/history.txt b/src/VBox/Devices/EFI/Firmware/BaseTools/Source/C/VfrCompile/Pccts/history.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..96d66d3c --- /dev/null +++ b/src/VBox/Devices/EFI/Firmware/BaseTools/Source/C/VfrCompile/Pccts/history.txt @@ -0,0 +1,186 @@ + + + + The History of PCCTS + + The Purdue Compiler-Construction Tool Set + + + Terence Parr + Parr Research Corporation + Minneapolis, Minnesota + and + University of Minnesota + Army High Performance Computing Research Center + + [Updated 8-7-94] + + + The PCCTS project began as a parser-generator project for a gra- +duate course at Purdue University in the Fall of 1988 taught by Hank +Dietz- translator-writing systems. Under the guidance of Professor +Dietz, the parser generator, ANTLR (originally called YUCC), continued +after the termination of the course and eventually became the subject +of Terence Parr's Master's thesis. Originally, lexical analysis was +performed via ALX which was soon replaced by Will Cohen's DLG in the +Fall of 1989 (DFA-based lexical-analyzer generator, also an offshoot +of the graduate translation course). + + The alpha version of ANTLR was totally rewritten resulting in +1.00B. Version 1.00B was released via an internet newsgroup +(comp.compilers) posting in February of 1990 and quickly gathered a +large following. 1.00B generated only LL(1) parsers, but allowed the +merged description of lexical and syntactic analysis. It had rudimen- +tary attribute handling similar to that of YACC and did not incor- +porate rule parameters or return values; downward inheritance was very +awkward. 1.00B-generated parsers terminated upon the first syntax +error. Lexical classes (modes) were not allowed and DLG did not have +an interactive mode. + + Upon starting his Ph.D. at Purdue in the Fall of 1990, Terence +Parr began the second total rewrite of ANTLR. The method by which +grammars may be practically analyzed to generate LL(k) lookahead +information was discovered in August of 1990 just before his return. +Version 1.00 incorporated this algorithm and included the AST mechan- +ism, lexical classes, error classes, and automatic error recovery; +code quality and portability were higher. In February of 1992 1.00 +was released via an article in SIGPLAN Notices. Peter Dahl, Ph.D. +candidate, and Professor Matt O'Keefe (both at the University of Min- +nesota) tested this version extensively. Dana Hoggatt (Micro Data +Base Systems, Inc.) came up with the idea of error grouping (strings +attached to non-terminals) and tested 1.00 heavily. + + Version 1.06 was released in December 1992 and represented a +large feature enhancement over 1.00. For example, rudimentary seman- +tic predicates were introduced, error messages were significantly +improved for k>1 lookahead and ANTLR parsers could indicate that loo- +kahead fetches were to occur only when necessary for the parse + + + + Page 1 + + PCCTS + + +(normally, the lookahead "pipe" was constantly full). Russell Quong +joined the project in the Spring of 1992 to aid in the semantic predi- +cate design. Beginning and advanced tutorials were created and +released as well. A makefile generator was included that sets up +dependencies and such correctly for ANTLR and DLG. Very few 1.00 +incompatibilities were introduced (1.00 was quite different from 1.00B +in some areas). + + 1.10 was released on August 31, 1993 and incorporated bug fixes, +a few feature enhancements and a major new capability - an arbitrary +lookahead operator (syntactic predicate), (alpha)?beta. This feature +was co-designed with Professor Russell Quong also at Purdue. To sup- +port infinite lookahead, a preprocessor flag, ZZINF_LOOK, was created +that forced the ANTLR() macro to tokenize all input prior to parsing. +Hence, at any moment, an action or predicate can see the entire input +sentence. The predicate mechanism of 1.06 was extended to allow mul- +tiple predicates to be hoisted; the syntactic context of a predicate +was also moved along with the predicate. + + In February of 1994, SORCERER (a simple tree-parser generator) +was released. This tool allows the user to parse child-sibling trees +by specifying a grammar rather than building a recursive-descent tree +walker by hand. Work towards a library of tree transformations is +underway. Aaron Sawdey at The University of Minnesota became a second +author of SORCERER after the initial release. + + On April 1, 1994, PCCTS 1.20 was released. This was the first +version to actively support C++ output. It also included important +fixes regarding semantic predicates and (..)+ subrules. This version +also introduced token classes, the "not" operator, and token ranges. + + On June 19, 1994, SORCERER 1.00B9 was released. Gary Funck of +Intrepid Technology joined the SORCERER team and provided very valu- +able suggestions regarding the "transform" mode of SORCERER. + + On August 8, 1994, PCCTS 1.21 was released. It mainly cleaned up +the C++ output and included a number of bug fixes. + + From the 1.21 release forward, the maintenance and support of all +PCCTS tools will be primarily provided by Parr Research Corporation, +Minneapolis MN---an organization founded on the principles of excel- +lence in research and integrity in business; we are devoted to provid- +ing really cool software tools. Please see file PCCTS.FUTURE for more +information. All PCCTS tools currently in the public domain will con- +tinue to be in the public domain. + + Looking towards the future, a graphical user-interface is in the +design phase. This would allow users to view the syntax diagram +representation of their grammars and would highlight nondeterministic +productions. Parsing can be traced graphically as well. This system +will be built using a multiplatform window library. We also antici- +pate the introduction of a sophisticated error handling mechanism +called "parser exception handling" in a near future release. + + + + + Page 2 + + PCCTS + + + Currently, PCCTS is used at over 1000 known academic, government, +and commercial sites in 37 countries. Of course, the true number of +users is unknown due to the large number of ftp sites. + Credits + +_____________________________________________________________________________ +_____________________________________________________________________________ +|ANTLR 1.00A Terence Parr Hank Dietz | +|ALX Terence Parr Hank Dietz | +|ANTLR 1.00B Terence Parr Hank Dietz, Will Cohen | +|DLG 1.00B Will Cohen Terence Parr, Hank Dietz | +|NFA Relabelling Will Cohen | +|LL(k) analysis Terence Parr Hank Dietz | +|ANTLR 1.00 Terence Parr Hank Dietz, Will Cohen | +|DLG 1.00 Will Cohen Terence Parr, Hank Dietz | +|ANTLR 1.06 Terence Parr Will Cohen, Russell Quong, Hank Dietz| +|DLG 1.06 Will Cohen Terence Parr, Hank Dietz | +|ANTLR 1.10 Terence Parr Will Cohen, Russell Quong | +|ANTLR 1.20 Terence Parr Will Cohen, Russell Quong | +|ANTLR 1.21 Terence Parr Russell Quong | +|DLG 1.10 Will Cohen Terence Parr | +|DLG 1.20 Will Cohen Terence Parr | +|DLG 1.21 Terence Parr | +|Semantic predicates Terence Parr Russell Quonq | +|Syntactic predicates Terence Parr Russell Quonq | +|SORCERER 1.00A Terence Parr | +|SORCERER 1.00B Terence Parr Aaron Sawdey | +|SORCERER 1.00B9 Terence Parr Aaron Sawdey, Gary Funck | +|___________________________________________________________________________| + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Page 3 + |