Backtick Hickup

[Eric Astor]

Jacob Rus wrote:

> John MacFarlane wrote:

>>

>> There's no way of knowing whether the initial two *'s should start

>> strong emphasis unless you scan forward.

> 

> I really don't see why it can't recognize *** as a unique token, and 

> figure out how to do the right thing by just adding a few more rules. 

> This doesn't seem like an insoluble problem to me.

> 

> -Jacob


Well, ANTLR, in particular, allows the arbitrary lookahead that would 
"scan forward", and thus fix the problem - so it's clearly possible to 
fix that way, while still keeping a formal grammar. Recognizing *** as a 
unique token would be fairly kludgy, and probably lead to still more 
edge cases/complexities in the parser.

Realistically, the lexer should just recognize '*' as a token, and 
resolve the complexities in the parser - and I think that might make the 
whole point moot anyhow.

- Eric