ALADIN: A Scanner Generator for Incremental Programming Environments

A large number of scanner generators has been developed. Since they are restricted to the longest match rule they are unsuitable for an incremental environment. We present the ALADIN system, which is able to deliver more than a single token if required. Thus, an ambiguity may be passed to the calling instance. Beyonf this "incremental feature'', ALADIN is a well-structured and easy-to-understand language. In contrast to existing systems, the desired behavior of the generated scanners is completely specified explicitly. Thus, the specifications are more abstracted than in other systems. A prototype implementation has shown that ALADIN-generated scanners have about the same performance as those generated by LEX.