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                 Release of version 1.61 of Parse::RecDescent
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DESCRIPTION

NAME

    Parse::RecDescent - generate recursive-descent parsers


DESCRIPTION

    RecDescent incrementally generates top-down recursive-descent text
    parsers from simple yacc-like grammar specifications. It provides:

        * Regular expressions or literal strings as terminals (tokens),

        * Multiple (non-contiguous) productions for any rule,

        * Repeated, optional and alternate subrules within productions,

	* Late-bound (run-time dispatched) subrules

        * Full access to Perl within actions specified as part of the grammar,

        * Simple automated error reporting during parser generation and parsing,

        * The ability to commit to, uncommit to, or reject particular
          productions during a parse,

        * Incremental extension of the parsing grammar (even during a parse),

        * The ability to retrieve the generated parsing code.

    See the file "RecDescent.pod" for excruciating detail on all of this.


LIMITATIONS

    * There's no support for parsing directly from an input stream.

    * The generator doesn't handle left-recursion.


PREREQUISITES

    Parse::RecDescent requires Text::Balanced, which is included in the
    distribution.


INSTALLATION

    It's all pure Perl, so just put the .pm files in their appropriate
    local Perl subdirectories.


CHANGES AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENT

    This readme refers to versions 1.XX.
    For details of changes, refer to the file Changes.

    Version 2.00 will provide an optional parser compiler to generate
    separate parsing modules with no construction run-time overhead.


AUTHOR

    Damian Conway (damian@cs.monash.edu.au)


COPYRIGHT

     Copyright (c) 1997-1998, Damian Conway. All Rights Reserved.
     This module is free software. It may be used, redistributed
     and/or modified under the terms of the Perl Artistic License
          (see http://www.perl.com/perl/misc/Artistic.html)


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CHANGES IN VERSION 1.61


	- Added <token:...> directive for supporting (future) token-stream
	  parsing (see pod)

	- Added feature that data is consumed if passed as a reference
	  (see pod)

	- Fixed bug in autogenerated errors: now ignores directives

	- Modified behaviour of <defer> directive so that deferred
	  actions only executed if total parse succeeds (i.e. returns
	  a defined value)

	- Made error messages "anti-deferred". That is, only those
	  errors invoked in paths that eventually caused a parse
	  to fail are printed - see documentation.

	- Miscellaneous fixes for Text::Balanced subroutines

	- Made private namespaces inherit Parse::RecDescent namespace
	  (leads to more intuitive behaviour when calling methods
	   of $thisparser)

	- *** NON-BACKWARDS COMPATIBLE CHANGE! ***
	  Changed the behaviour of token separator specification.
	  Now uses <skip:...> directive. See pod for new details.




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AVAILABILITY

Parse::RecDescent has been uploaded to the CPAN
and is also available from:

	http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~damian/CPAN/Parse-RecDescent.tar.gz

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