🚀 go-pugleaf

Could some compiler guru (or in fact anyone who knows something about
the subject) perhaps explain just a few of the practical ramifications
of using LALR-type parsers?  What I'm wondering about is not so much
performance, but rather things like -

	1) What can't you do with LALR-parsable languages that you
	   might conceivably want to do in a practical programming
	   language?
	2) In intuitive terms, how do LALR-parsable languages differ
	   from languages that are parsable by other strategies as
	   well, or that cannot be handled by LALR parsers (which gets
	   us back to question 1)?

Perhaps more to the point:  Are there any books which discuss such mat-
ters, and which are not simply long strings of pseudo-code, lemmas, and
proofs?

I found a book, _LR Parsing_, by Nigel Chapman, but this work has a very
narrow scope.  To its credit, it utilizes both mathematical and practical
approaches.  And it doesn't restrict itself to C (a la "parsing in C").
Still, it covers only LR(0) and LALR(1)-parser generators, and doesn't
have much to say about the practical characteristics of languages which
belong in these categories and how they compare to other context free
languages.

-- 

   -Richard L. Goerwitz              goer%sophist@uchicago.bitnet
   goer@sophist.uchicago.edu         rutgers!oddjob!gide!sophist!goer