JavaScript ANTLR target

Tonight I managed to build ANTLR version with JavaScript target.

I must admit it was one of the most bizarre builds I did. The problem was not the target itself. The maintainers did a decent job making it. Although it is in it's early stages (the guys claim it not yet ready for publication) the compilation of the target went smooth. Building ANTLR is another story. The instructions (http://www.antlr.org/wiki/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=732) are less then obvious and only a little bit helpful. And that's a bit strange, because all in all, ANTLR is quite well documented.

[[In situation like this I start to appreciate build tools that are more strict as for defining dependencies in projects, like Maven.]]

Anyway, I did build it, so there is no need to complain.

What is important, that I can theoretically use the Shogi grammars I am working on, to build example browser-side parser for game record. Of course, I could do it earlier, by hand. But it would be much more tedious work. And this also gives me an opportunity to learn new things which is, as usual, great fun :-).

I think my first attempt will be a parser/viewer for format in which Reijer Grimbergen posts games on shogi-l and (most of the time) on his pages.

You can see an example game score in this format here. There are no variations. The file consist of only 3 types of information: tag (game details), move (what move whas made) and comment. The file is well formed -- there are strict rules to determine which line is what. A tag line starts and ends with '[' and ']' respectively. A line with move information starts with integer, followed by a dot, followed by move description, followed by two timestamps. The only exception are the comments. They can appear anytime in the text and couldn't be easily distinguished by the machine.

As I understand it, if I, in my parser, write a rule to recognize comment, which is basically free text, the rule would also consume other part of the file also. In other words every line of the text would satisfy the rule (every line can be treated as a free text), so the parser would be confused which rule to apply.

Actually I am not sure if a grammar file can describe it. (read: I am not sure if I could describe it ;-) ). Well, we'll see about that.

Ok, wish me luck.