43 lines
2.1 KiB
Plaintext
43 lines
2.1 KiB
Plaintext
[/==============================================================================
|
|
Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Joel de Guzman
|
|
Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Hartmut Kaiser
|
|
|
|
Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying
|
|
file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)
|
|
===============================================================================/]
|
|
|
|
[section Quick Start]
|
|
|
|
[heading Why would you want to use Spirit.Qi?]
|
|
|
|
Spirit.Qi is designed to be a practical parsing tool. The ability to generate a
|
|
fully-working parser from a formal EBNF specification inlined in C++
|
|
significantly reduces development time. Programmers typically approach parsing
|
|
using ad hoc hacks with primitive tools such as scanf. Even regular-expression
|
|
libraries (such as boost regex) or scanners (such as Boost tokenizer) do not
|
|
scale well when we need to write more elaborate parsers. Attempting to write
|
|
even a moderately-complex parser using these tools leads to code that is hard to
|
|
understand and maintain.
|
|
|
|
One prime objective is to make the tool easy to use. When one thinks of a
|
|
parser generator, the usual reaction is "it must be big and complex with a
|
|
steep learning curve." Not so. Spirit is designed to be fully scalable. The
|
|
library is structured in layers. This permits learning on an as-needed basis,
|
|
after only learning the minimal core and basic concepts.
|
|
|
|
For development simplicity and ease in deployment, the entire library
|
|
consists of only header files, with no libraries to link against or build.
|
|
Just put the Spirit distribution in your include path, compile and run. Code
|
|
size? -very tight -essentially comparable to hand written recursive descent
|
|
code.
|
|
|
|
Our tutorials will walk you through the simplest Spirit examples, incrementally
|
|
building on top of the earlier examples as we expose more and more features and
|
|
techniques. We will try to be as gentle as possible with the learning curve.
|
|
We will present the tutorials in a cookbook style approach. This style of
|
|
presentation is based on our BoostCon '07 and BoostCon '08 slides.
|
|
|
|
Have fun!
|
|
|
|
[endsect] [/ Quickstart]
|