Railroad Diagram Generator: A tool for creating syntax diagrams

by ingve • 11 years ago

55 9 11 years ago

detaro2• 11 years ago

Does not involve railroads :/

That said, it seems to work well and produce nice graphics, so functionality is a win.

jasode• 11 years ago

Does not involve railroads :/

Couldn't tell if you were joking but "railroad" is a common term-of-art for syntax diagrams. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntax_diagram

detaro2• 11 years ago

Never heard them called that, and so I clicked the link with different expectations ;)

dexen• 11 years ago

Railroad Diagrams are used to great effect in SQLite documentation, for description of mandatory/optional syntax elements, for example:

However the SQLite project seems to be using different tool, implemented in Tcl: http://wiki.tcl-lang.org/21708 .

drunkenfly• 11 years ago

Oracle uses such diagrams for many years.

kwhitefoot• 11 years ago

Pascal was described with such diagrams in Wirth's Pascal User Manual 1975 and they were not new then.

They made learning Pascal much easier than trying to interpret BNF.

LoSboccacc• 11 years ago

saw it on the json page as well

but I'm not into grammars. I used antlr once, and they did support that as well in the designer http://www.antlr3.org/works/screenshots/ambiguouspath.jpg

Someone• 11 years ago

jakemoshenko• 11 years ago

One of my favorite tools generates these for regexes, taking much of they mystery out of the syntax:

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