Please remove PD-YACC sources from your machine IMMEDIATELY

[Erik Murrey]

In article <235 at pigs.UUCP>, haugj at pigs.UUCP (Joe Bob Willie) writes:
> In article <135 at dcs.UUCP> wnp at dcs.UUCP (Wolf N. Paul) writes:
> >2. If they are reacting to the name YACC, does this mean that they ARE
> >   moving towards considering the names of *NIX utilities their property
> >   which no-one else may use? If so, where does this leave such products
> >   as MINIX, MKS, etc.?
> 
> no, they seem to be aiming at the source itself, or possibly the ideas
> contained in the source.  i'm not certain.  i don't know how this will
> affect unix-like utilities.  it may affect clones which are not exact
> source ripoffs, but say, used the exact same algorithms.  for example,
> a yacc clone which built a lalr(0) parser identical to the real yacc
> might be more in danger than one which built a lr(0) or lr(1) parser.

I remember reading a paper which was the basis of YACC's algorithms.
I think it was in CACM, something like "Deterministic Parsing of
Ambiguous Grammars"  (I may be way off here...).  It discussed
disambiguating rules for shift-reduce and shift-shift confilcts, and
how to incorporate them into a lalr(0) parser generator such as YACC.

Wouldn't this nullify any claim for trade secrets within YACC?

---
Erik Murrey
erik at mpx1.UUCP
...!{bpa,vu-vlsi,cbmvax}!mpx1!erik
ok, so my spelling sucks... what do you want?