Re: Emacs contributions, C and Lisp

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: David Kastrup <address@hidden>
> Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2014 17:37:14 +0100
> 
> > Is it certain that we actually need a compiler for that?  Did someone
> > investigate whether CEDET infrastructure is capable of doing something
> > like that?  Since, as you point out, a compiler will probably choke on
> > syntactically incorrect input, shouldn't we try to look elsewhere?
> > After all, we don't need to parse the source completely, only as much
> > as needed for completion.
> 
> Nobody can parse C++ reliably.  GCC has given up on trying to teach
> Bison (aka LALR(1) and then some) how to parse C++ and has implemented
> its own hand-written parser.

I understand the potential difficulties, but since we only need a
relatively small part of parsing, perhaps it's worth trying first?  If
push comes to shove, what was implemented in GCC can be reimplemented
in Emacs Lisp, no?  Though I have hard time believing that we will
need to go that far.

> If you want to be able to reliably follow references to their
> _corresponding_ definition, it's almost inavoidable to ask some compiler
> for its opinion just what fully qualified function/operator is to be
> considered to correspond to the source.

I don't understand why, sorry.  Are we still talking about smart
completion, i.e. displaying candidate expansions of text at or near
point?  Or are we talking about something else?