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The Definitive ANTLR 4 Reference 2nd Edition

by Terence Parr (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 171 ratings
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Programmers run into parsing problems all the time. Whether it's a data format like JSON, a network protocol like SMTP, a server configuration file for Apache, a PostScript/PDF file, or a simple spreadsheet macro language--ANTLR v4 and this book will demystify the process. ANTLR v4 has been rewritten from scratch to make it easier than ever to build parsers and the language applications built on top. This completely rewritten new edition of the bestselling Definitive ANTLR Reference shows you how to take advantage of these new features.

Build your own languages with ANTLR v4, using ANTLR's new advanced parsing technology. In this book, you'll learn how ANTLR automatically builds a data structure representing the input (parse tree) and generates code that can walk the tree (visitor). You can use that combination to implement data readers, language interpreters, and translators.

You'll start by learning how to identify grammar patterns in language reference manuals and then slowly start building increasingly complex grammars. Next, you'll build applications based upon those grammars by walking the automatically generated parse trees. Then you'll tackle some nasty language problems by parsing files containing more than one language (such as XML, Java, and Javadoc). You'll also see how to take absolute control over parsing by embedding Java actions into the grammar.

You'll learn directly from well-known parsing expert Terence Parr, the ANTLR creator and project lead. You'll master ANTLR grammar construction and learn how to build language tools using the built-in parse tree visitor mechanism. The book teaches using real-world examples and shows you how to use ANTLR to build such things as a data file reader, a JSON to XML translator, an R parser, and a Java class->interface extractor. This book is your ticket to becoming a parsing guru!

What You Need:

ANTLR 4.0 and above. Java development tools. Ant build system optional (needed for building ANTLR from source)
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  1. ISBN-10
    1934356999
  2. ISBN-13
    978-1934356999
  3. Edition
    2nd
  4. Publisher
    Pragmatic Bookshelf
  5. Publication date
    February 19, 2013
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    7.58 x 0.8 x 8.98 inches
  8. Print length
    328 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

""Parr's clear writing and lighthearted style make it a pleasure to learn the practical details of building language processors." "

Dan Bornstein - Designer of the Dalvik VM for Android

""ANTLR is an exceptionally powerful and flexible tool for parsing formal languages. At Twitter, we use it exclusively for query parsing in our search engine. Our grammars are clean and concise and the generated code is efficient and stable. This book is our go-to reference for ANTLR v4--engaging writing, clear descriptions and practical examples all in one place." "

Samuel Luckenbill - Senior Manager of Search Infrastructure - Twitter, Inc.

About the Author

Terence Parr is a professor of computer science and graduate program director at the University of San Francisco. He is the creator of the ANTLR parser generator and StringTemplate engine, and also has broad industrial experience related to language implementation. Terence holds a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from Purdue University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Army High-Performance Computing Research Center at the University of Minnesota.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pragmatic Bookshelf; 2nd edition (February 19, 2013)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 328 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1934356999
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1934356999
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.58 x 0.8 x 8.98 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 171 ratings

About the author

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Terence Parr

Terence Parr

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Terence Parr is a professor of computer science and was founding director of the MS in Analytics program at the University of San Francisco, where he continues to work on his ANTLR parser generator (http://www.antlr.org) and template engine (http://www.stringtemplate.org). Terence has consulted for and held various technical positions at companies such as IBM, Lockheed Missiles and Space, NeXT, and Renault Automation. Terence holds a Ph.D. in computer engineering from Purdue University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Army High-Performance Computing Research Center at the University of Minnesota.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
171 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book helpful for students and programmers. They appreciate its clear explanations of ANTLR grammars and language design basics. The content is well-written and easy to understand, making it an enjoyable read.

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Information qualityLanguage clarityReadability
24 customers mention "Information quality"20 positive4 negative

Customers find the book's information useful. It explains what they need to know and provides an essential reference for students and programmers. The book is packed with examples and basic language design information. They say it's a good general introduction to ANTLR4, though it doesn't cover many edge cases.

"...skills I picked up thanks to this book have already come in handy hundreds of times and I'm sure will benefit me thousands of times in the years..." Read more

"...ANTLR4 is an amazingly powerful tool for parsing. The reference is a great place to start to develop your own *.g4 ANTLR grammar file...." Read more

"This book is excellent at teaching ANTLR, I only wish the author had re-ordered some of the chapters to teach you critical concepts first...." Read more

"...And there are plenty of examples. There aren't many books written this well. ANTLR4 is highly evolved from where it started years ago...." Read more

16 customers mention "Language clarity"16 positive0 negative

Customers find the book helpful for learning ANTLR grammars and using them in code. They appreciate the clear explanations and examples, covering topics like island grammars, lexer channels, and handling grammars. The content is well-written and goes into depth than what they get from other sources. Readers say the language is powerful yet easy to use.

"...The chapters have bite sized problems that are clear and fun to work through. But these small bites pack quite a punch...." Read more

"...will go far, but having a good understanding of it will make ANTLR easy to understand." Read more

"...I found getting a parser using ParseTreeListeners was pretty easily accomplished, and the resulting JAVA code can be given to other non parser folks..." Read more

"...Despite that, the book did a great job of explaining how to write ANTLR grammars and use them in your code...." Read more

4 customers mention "Readability"4 positive0 negative

Customers find the book easy to read and fun to work through. The problems are clear and enjoyable.

"...The chapters have bite sized problems that are clear and fun to work through. But these small bites pack quite a punch...." Read more

"...Excellent follow-on reading to Nystrom's 'Crafting Interpreters' as a way to get your hands dirty and leverage a lot of the fundamentals you picked..." Read more

"...This book is a joy to read (I am slow and had to read it a couple times.) The language is immensely powerful but very easy to use...." Read more

"It was a good read..." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Breck
    5.0 out of 5 stars My advice: read this book!
    Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    This book surprised me. I expected to learn a niche skill set that I would use rarely. Instead I've found myself using my new ANTLR, grammar, lexing and parsing skills many times a day, everyday. Other reviewers seem to have known a lot about parsing when they read this book so my review is geared more toward general programmers like me who did not have much of a background in parsers.

    The chapters have bite sized problems that are clear and fun to work through. But these small bites pack quite a punch. When I finished the book, I didn't just now know ANTLR. I now knew all programming languages better. I didn't just know abstract syntax trees better. I now knew their ubiquity.

    As a software engineer at Microsoft, I worked in many programming languages, including many internal ones. That was hard. And then came this book. Now learning new languages is a breeze.

    I'm also able to have effective conversations about programming language design.

    I've read around one hundred top rated programming books and would say this is one of the most valuable programming books ever published. I had a similar valuable experience reading Mastering Regular Expressions a decade ago. I have probably benefitted from those skills 50,000 times since. Similarly the language skills I picked up thanks to this book have already come in handy hundreds of times and I'm sure will benefit me thousands of times in the years ahead. I'll say it again, read this book!

    (small nit: the name ANTLR. I think the acronymn names were a cool experiment, but a clearer and simpler name might help this tool and book reach a broader audience!)
    7 people found this helpful
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  • George McGinn
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great Reference Book that's a companion to "Language Implementation Patterns ..."
    Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2020
    Verified Purchase
    If you order the book "Language Implementation Patterns: Create Your Own Domain-Specific and General Programming Languages (Pragmatic Programmers) 1st Edition" this reference book is a great asset to help you not only how to implement and use the ANTLR 4 software, it will expand your knowledge of the software.

    If you have working knowledge of the ANTLR software (v4 is a newer version), then having this book handy to answer those questions you can't find is very handy.

    It is well laid out, and easy to understand for new programmers. However, the book will get technical, and knowing how to program in languages other than BASIC (I recommend Python and JAVA) will help you with the technical stuff.

    And I always recommend that for each machine you own, you should have an understanding of its Assembler language, as this is machine or CPU dependent, and the 6502 chip for the Commodore and Apple II series has different instruction sets than the Z80 chip, or for the Apple IIgs, while it has a built-in MOS 6502 emulation chip, which makes it comparable to the C64/128, it actually runs on a 65C816 (the assembler is the 65816).

    Being able to code in your machine's assembler will go far, but having a good understanding of it will make ANTLR easy to understand.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Sci-fi buff
    5.0 out of 5 stars ANTLR4 Reference is awesome
    Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2017
    Verified Purchase
    I hadn't really worked with parser tools in over 20 years, and the last time I used Lex/Yacc it was painful enough that I just hand coded my parser.
    It turns out that Terence Parr seemed to have a similar experience, and decided to do something about it. ANTLR4 is an amazingly powerful tool for parsing. The reference is a great place to start to develop your own *.g4 ANTLR grammar file.
    I found getting a parser using ParseTreeListeners was pretty easily accomplished, and the resulting JAVA code can be given to other non parser folks (the Listener code you write... not the auto generated stuff). In the past I always found anything associated with lexx/yacc/bison was too convoluted to explain to anyone. But ANTLR4 care and feeding is human managable.

    The one issue I have with the language deals with large HUGE files which consume too much memory. I'm trying to figure a way to use parse tree listeners and "dump" the parse tree periodically. The solutions for large files currently appear to require you use grammar actions, which are great, and easier to develop than the parse tree listeners... but ANTLR4's advantage over ANTLR3 is that you don't have to put any parser actions into the grammar... I find that a bonus, but that seems to limit processing for large files.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Michael
    4.0 out of 5 stars A Little Too Much Sales Pitch, but Otherwise an Excellent Book
    Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    This book is excellent at teaching ANTLR, I only wish the author had re-ordered some of the chapters to teach you critical concepts first. Much of this book feels like an extremely long sales pitch instead of actually trying to teach you something.

    In chapter four the author is showing a lot of cool things that ANTLR can do for you, and the grammars that help accomplish that. However, he does not officially teach you how to write a grammar until chapter five. Chapter six shows you how you could use ANTLR to parse existing syntaxes, but it does not really teach you anything new. I wish the author had condensed his sales pitch to five pages or less, instead of dedicating whole chapters to it. In other words, I would have put chapters four and six somewhere farther back in the book, and focused on really teaching you the syntax of ANTLR grammars, and how to use its features.

    Despite that, the book did a great job of explaining how to write ANTLR grammars and use them in your code. All of the online documentation I found on ANTLR was horrible, trying to get by without this book is crazy. Along the way, I came to love ANTLR as a tool, since it could save me a ton of development time, and since it supports so many great features. It's just a really powerful tool by itself.

    I would highly recommend this book to anybody.
    10 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • Christoph Schreiber
    5.0 out of 5 stars Pflichtlektüre für alle, die eine eigene Programmiersprache entwickeln wollen
    Reviewed in Germany on January 26, 2024
    Verified Purchase
    ANTLR ist *das* Tool, mit dem man die Grammatik einer neuen Programmiersprache schreibt.
    Report
  • Ricardo da Silva Alcantara
    5.0 out of 5 stars Fácil e poderoso
    Reviewed in Brazil on March 31, 2018
    Verified Purchase
    Esse livro é muito prático e objetivo. Consegui fazer o que precisava após ler 15% do livro. Não duvido que se eu tivesse ido até o final eu seria capar de fazer um copilador. Ainda não terminei de ler, mas após conseguir concluir o meu objetivo de forma realmente fácil eu não pude me segurar e vir escrever esse review. Recomendo!
    Report
  • MERIC
    5.0 out of 5 stars Parfait
    Reviewed in France on June 10, 2018
    Verified Purchase
    Parfait ! Suffisamment technique pour qu’on resorte de la lecture avec toutes les clefs et suffisamment vulgarisé pour rentrer dans la notion de grammaire en douceur.

    Nombreux exemples de difficulté ascendante et pour la gestion. De cas divers comme
    Langage type C
    JSON
    Csv
    ...
    Report
  • Amazon カスタマー
    5.0 out of 5 stars 規則がある文字列に対する万能変換器
    Reviewed in Japan on October 9, 2022
    Verified Purchase
    ユーザーに簡単な関数定義を入力させ、その文字列を解析・検証するために正規表現を使っていたのですが、構文規則が複雑になってきたため構文解析ツールを探していました。bison/flex もよかったのですが、ANTLR4が手軽に感じたのでこの本を購入しました。lexerとparserをそれぞれ解説した後、統合的な説明と相互の関連についての説明があります。クローンしたサンプルコード動かしながら解説を読めるので理解し易かったです。
    Report
  • Enrico Denti
    5.0 out of 5 stars Bel libro, completo e ben scritto
    Reviewed in Italy on November 29, 2017
    Verified Purchase
    Gli argomenti sono trattati bene, in modo chiaro ma al contempo non prolisso: il risultato è un libro efficace, ben impostato, che si legge velocemente -- elemento tutt'altro che trascurabile, visto che tutti vorremmo leggere molto ma il tempo non c'è mai, quindi essere efficaci nella scrittura tecnica oggi è cruciale)
    Report