Marpa Power (or About Parsing The C Language)

MARPA OVERVIEW

Marpa is an Earley's parser, in that it works by creating lists of possibilities at each token.
Marpa handles right-recursion using Joop Leo's method. This makes it O(n) for every class of grammar in practical use today.
Marpa handles nullables using the ideas of Aycock&Horspool 2002. As a side effect, this opens the way to further improvements in the Earley parse engine.
The Marpa algorithm allows the application to be fully aware, at all times, of what is going on in the parse. Obviously, this benefits error-handling. More importantly, it opens the road to powerful new parsing strategies.