Antlr stands for ANother Tool for Language Recognition. The tool is able to generate compiler or interpreter for any computer language. Besides obvious use, e.g. need to parse a real 'big' programming language such as Java, PHP or SQL, it can help with smaller, more common tasks.
It is useful any time you need to evaluate expressions unknown at compile-time or to parse non-trivial user input or files in a weird format. Of course, it is possible to create custom hand made parser for any of these tasks. However, it usually takes much more time and effort. A little knowledge of a good parser generator may turn these time-consuming tasks into easy and fast exercises.
It is useful any time you need to evaluate expressions unknown at compile-time or to parse non-trivial user input or files in a weird format. Of course, it is possible to create custom hand made parser for any of these tasks. However, it usually takes much more time and effort. A little knowledge of a good parser generator may turn these time-consuming tasks into easy and fast exercises.
