Re: Open 7.3 items

Michael Meskes <meskes(at)postgresql(dot)org> writes:
> On Tue, Jul 30, 2002 at 11:50:38PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>> ecpg and bison issues - solved?

> Not solved yet. And it's just a matter of time until we run into it with
> the main parser grammar file as well.

Yeah, I've been worrying about that too. Any idea how close we are to
trouble in the main grammar?

> Bison upstream is working on
> removing all those short ints, but I have yet to receive a version that
> compiles ecpg grammar correctly.

If no solution is forthcoming, we might have to adopt plan B: find
another parser-generator tool. Whilst googling for bison info I came
across "Why Bison is Becoming Extinct"
http://www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds7-5/bison.html
which is a tad amusing at least. Now, it's anyone's guess whether any
of the tools he suggests are actually ready for prime time; they might
have practical limits much worse than bison's. But I got awfully
frustrated yesterday trying (once again) to get bison to allow a
schema-qualified type name in the syntax <typename> <literal string>.
I'm just about ready to consider alternatives.

Plan C would be to devote some work to minimizing the number of states
in the main grammar (I assume it's number of states that's the problem).
I doubt anyone's ever tried, so there might be enough low-hanging fruit
to get ecpg off the hook for awhile.

regards, tom lane