Resources on parsing expressions

Question

I'm writing a program that needs to build syntax trees from expressions in prefix notation. What resources would you recommend I look into to learn about parsing expressions?

Answer 1

Your question is rather broad. I'd look into anything dealing with the following:

• Parsing expression-grammar
• BNFs, EBNF`s
• Recursive-Descent Parsers
• Operator-precedence parser (basically prefix parser)
• Polish notation (talks about prefix notation)

Your best bet is to try and understand BNF's and EBNF's. From there you can go on to writing recursive-descent parsers (they can be created easily from your grammars with a few simple rules).

This page here talks about recursive-descent parsing using BNF's.

Answer 2

In addition to the stuff already listed, I'd recomment to consider the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsing_expression_grammar