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- [/==============================================================================
- Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Joel de Guzman
- Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Hartmut Kaiser
- Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying
- file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)
- ===============================================================================/]
- [section Quick Start]
- [heading Why would you want to use Spirit.Qi?]
- Spirit.Qi is designed to be a practical parsing tool. The ability to generate a
- fully-working parser from a formal EBNF specification inlined in C++
- significantly reduces development time. Programmers typically approach parsing
- using ad hoc hacks with primitive tools such as scanf. Even regular-expression
- libraries (such as boost regex) or scanners (such as Boost tokenizer) do not
- scale well when we need to write more elaborate parsers. Attempting to write
- even a moderately-complex parser using these tools leads to code that is hard to
- understand and maintain.
- One prime objective is to make the tool easy to use. When one thinks of a
- parser generator, the usual reaction is "it must be big and complex with a
- steep learning curve." Not so. Spirit is designed to be fully scalable. The
- library is structured in layers. This permits learning on an as-needed basis,
- after only learning the minimal core and basic concepts.
- For development simplicity and ease in deployment, the entire library
- consists of only header files, with no libraries to link against or build.
- Just put the Spirit distribution in your include path, compile and run. Code
- size? -very tight -essentially comparable to hand written recursive descent
- code.
- Our tutorials will walk you through the simplest Spirit examples, incrementally
- building on top of the earlier examples as we expose more and more features and
- techniques. We will try to be as gentle as possible with the learning curve.
- We will present the tutorials in a cookbook style approach. This style of
- presentation is based on our BoostCon '07 and BoostCon '08 slides.
- Have fun!
- [endsect] [/ Quickstart]
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