| Flat (Formal LAanguage Transformation) is an experimental programming language |
| for parsing, transforming, and pretty-printing any data format that can be |
| expressed as a Parsing Expression Grammar (PEG) [1]. |
| |
| Its purpose is to provide an easy way of dealing with file formats like |
| Markdown, LaTeX, and org-mode which use a custom grammar, rather than a |
| standardized meta-format like XML or JSON. |
| |
| Initially, the intention is to simply provide a parser interpreter (similar to a |
| parser generator of the bison/flex variety) such that we can get an abstract |
| syntax tree from a file, from which further processing can be done. The plan is |
| to later extend it to include a domain-specific language for expressing |
| transformations between different grammars, similar to Stratego/XT. [2] |
| |
| To understand PEGs, read the following papers: |
| |
| "Parsing Expression Grammars: A Recognition-Based Syntactic Foundation". Bryan |
| Ford, POPL, January 2004. http://bford.info/pub/lang/peg.pdf |
| |
| "Packrat Parsing: Simple, Powerful, Lazy, Linear Time". Bryan Ford. ICFP, |
| October 2002. http://bford.info/pub/lang/packrat-icfp02.pdf |
| |
| [1] http://bford.info/packrat |
| |
| [2] http://strategoxt.org |
