JavaCC : Java Glossary

Formerly known as Jack. JavaCC is a parser, like YACC (Yet Another Compiler Compiler), except that is it written in Java and generates Java code. It started out handled by Sun, then by Metamata, then bought out by Webgain, who went belly up. It is now an open source project. The current version is 6.0 Last revised/verified: 2017-02-12. It is still the most popular parser written in Java. JavaCC is similar to PCCTS (Purdue Compiler Compiler Tool Set). JavaCC is a LL(k) (top down) parser, whereas YACC is a LALR(1) (Look Ahead Left-to-Right parse, single token look-ahead) (bottom up) parser, so the grammars look quite different. The documentation is quite readable, unlike most of its competition. The parser has some parsing speedup tricks like lookahead and custom code for the tricky bits.

JavaCC has been stagnated, but it showed some signs of renewed life with a recent release. Most new parsers are written in ANTLR. JavaCC is more intuitive and better fit for getting your feet with parsers.

It blew my mind when a little parser I wrote worked first time. It is much simpler than it first looks. The easiest way to learn is to study the *.jj example grammar descriptions and to Google for example source code for JavaCC code for grammars similar to what you want to tackle.

download JavaCC 6.0 free. Last revised/verified: 2014-04-28 The download zip includes documentation, JJTree and a number of simple *.jj example grammar descriptions. Just unzip everything with embedded folder names into a Program Files directory. It does not have an explicit installer. You will want to tweak javacc-6.0\bin\javacc.bat, (the script that compiles your grammar descriptor into Java source code) and put

You write little methods that describe the various phrases of your grammar. They are a mixture of Java code and JavaCC grammatical BNF (Backus-Naur Form). JavaCC then merges them and converts the whole thing into pure Java source code, with methods that will recognise the various phrases. When you compile that, you can parse text. In addition there are commands to describe the tokens of your language tokens — the basic units/words.

Grammars

Dongwon Lee used to maintain a list of JavaCC grammars but abandoned the project. I wrote him, but he did not write back. I used the Wayback Machine to recover some of his snapshotted it to be discarded. Please pass on new submissions and updates.

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JavaCC Grammars

JavaCC Grammars
Grammar	Download	Author	Released	Version	Description
Ada		John R. Callahan	1998-06-04		Rudimentary Ada9x grammar.
ASN.1		Helena Sarin	1998-03-20		ASN.1 grammar ITU Recommendation X.208.
C++		Theodore Norvell			JavaCC parser. Coming soon.
C++	download	Sreenivasa Viswanadha	1997-03-20	1.1	Part of JavaCC package
C++ to HTML	download	Theodore Norvell	2001-01-01		Applet to convert C++ code to HTML code, with syntax highlighting
Curl	download	Doug South	1997-03-21		Part of JavaCC package
DCL		Pat Martin	2001-07-24	2.0	DCL - Dynamic Content Language: Welcome to the DCL homepage. DCL was a project born in frustration. Dealing with HTML pages within java programs can be quite tedious. Most of that which you are presenting doesn’t change, only small regions of the content tend to need dynamic output. In addition, it’s difficult to come up with one solution to every problem without resorting to a full fledged language and so DCL came to be…
DTD	download	Theodore Norvell	2011-02-09		A JavaCC parser for content models as found in XML’s DTD files. It doesn’t parse the whole DTD file, because SAX can do that, but SAX doesn’t parse the content models. It may be out of date.
DTD	download	John Gebbie	2001-03-27		Almost-complete grammar file to parse XML DTD 1.0.
DU	download download	John D. Ramsdell	1997-01-20		Part of JavaCC package. Parses the output from du (disk usage summarization program on UNIX) into nested parenthesized lists. The parser was developed for an old version of the Disk Usage Tree Map Viewer. The latest version does not run du as an inferior process, so the parser is no longer used.
ECMAScript		Jean-Marc Lugrin	1998-10-17	1.0	FESI (pronounced fezz-y rhymes with fuzzy) is a full implementation of the ECMAScript language (defined in the standard ECMA 262 available at ecma-international/ (edition of 1997-06). ECMAScript is largely equivalent to the JavaScript language version 1.1 or to the core part of JScript, but without the navigator specific extensions.
Express	download	Jason A. Goodman	1998-10-26		Grammar for the EXPRESS product representation language as defined in IS0 10303-1 which covers industrial automation systems and integration, product data representation and exchange.
GDMO	download	Dermot Dwyer	1999-04-19		ISO/CCITT Guidelines for Definition of Managed Objects (GDMO) into UML.
HEL		Fabien Azavant Arnaud Sahuguet			Part of World Wide Web Wrapper Factory (W4F) package. HEL (HTML Extraction Language) relies on the Document Object Model from W3C. An HTML document is a tree with a hierarchy of tags, with html as the root. HEL permits to describe extraction rules in terms of path-expressions along this tree. In addition, HEL has some regular expression capabilities to capture finer details of the document (like dates, numerical format, etc.)
HTML	download				Part of JavaCC package. Covers HTML 3.2 specification.
HTML		Brian Goetz	1999-11-03	1.0	This is a JavaCC grammar for parsing HTML documents. It does not enforce the DTD, but instead builds a simple parse tree which can be used to validate, reformat, display, analyze, or edit the HTML document. The goal was to produce a parse tree which threw away very little information contained in the source file, so that by dumping the parse tree, an almost identical copy of the input document would result. The only source information discarded by the parser is whitespace inside of tags (i.e., the spaces or newlines between the attributes of a tag.) It is not confused by things that look like tags inside of quoted strings.
IDL	download			0.1	Part of JavaCC package. A grammar for the IDL (Interface Definition Language) of OMG CORBA 2.0 specification.
InfoSapient	download download	Michael McConnell	2002-01-19	1.1	InfoSapient Business rules engine. InfoSapient is a business rules engine used for the expression of policy or operation rules within a business.
Java		Sriram Sankar			Part of JavaCC package. Sriram Sankar is the original author of JavaCC and continues to maintain it.
Java 1.4	download	Andrea Gini	2002-02-24		A grammar for parsing java 1.4 sources. It is a modified version of the grammar written by Sriram Sankar for Java 1.1 and modified by David Williams for Java 1.2. It has been modified to accept Java sources for Java 1.4. The grammar have been modified in four parts: 1) assert has been included to the keyword list 2) AssertStatement() production has been added 3) the production Statement() has been modified in order to support AssertStatement() 4) in the main the string for Java1.2 code has been changed with for Java1.4 code
Java 1.4		Theodore Norvell			JJTree parser. Coming soon.
Java 1.4	download	Marco Savard	2002-03-28		I used the latest version of grammar for Java 1.4 (written by Andrea Gini). It works well, but I found two constructs that were not supported by this grammar, although it is valid in Java (according Oracle’s documentation). I have fixed the problem and I send you the modified grammar so it can be useful for some users…
Java 1.4	download	Andrea Gini	2002-05-05		This is a bug fix of the grammar written by Sriram Sankar for Java 1.1, modified by David Williams for Java 1.2, by Andrea Gini for Java 1.4 and finally by Marco Savard to include a missing construct…
Java to HTML	download	Theodore Norvell	2001-01-01		Applet to convert Java code to HTML code, with syntax highlighting
Java to HTML	download	Paul Cager	2001-12-19	1.0	JavaCC grammar to convert Java or JavaCC code to HTML.
JavaScript	download	Roland Paterson-Jones	1997-04-01		rloand.javascript package. A .jj grammar for Javascript, from the specification document, plus an expression tree generator and (incomplete) interpreter.
Oberon	download download	James Power	1998-11-17		A parser for the programming language Oberon-2. Oberon is the latest generation in the Wirth family of languages, an heir to the Pascal and Modula tradition.
ODL	download	Vladimir Rubanov	1999-07-23	0.1	ODMG Object Definition Language (ODL). The language is based on IDL and is specified in ODMG 2.0 standard. Production numeration corresponds to this standard. The grammar is tested and used at the Institute for System programming of Russian Academy of Science.
OGNL		Drew Davidson	2002-04-05		OGNL stands for Object-Graph Navigation Language; it is an expression language for getting and setting properties of Java objects. You use the same expression for both getting and setting the value of a property.
OQL	download	Koen Hendrickx	1997-09-25		(Unfinished Version) Object Query Language (OQL) defined in ODMG 2.0 specification.
PGN	download	Martin Rademacher	2001-08-28	6.5	PGN is Portable Game Notation. For more information see the Wikipedia PGN entry.
PHP	download	Satyam		0.1	Parses PHP 5.0 grammar. Tested with the PHP 5 test suite, except for exceptions noted in the TODO list contained in the source.
Python	download	Jim Hugunin		2.0	Part of JPython package. Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented, extensible programming language.
Quilt	download	Henry Chiu Dongwon Lee	2000-08-17	0.9	QuiltParser is a parser for the Quilt XML query language written with JavaCC as a part of XPRESS project at UCLA / CSD. This small, implementable language has been recently proposed by Robie, Chamberlin and Florescu; it integrates the advantages of various languages while meeting the W3C’s XML Query Requirements.
Rational Rose	download	Markus Dahm	2001-06-18	1.11	A JavaCC grammar for models created by Rational Rose. The Homepage of the CrazyBeans project.
RMAIL	download				Part of JavaCC package. Processes RMAIL files that are created by the GNU emacs editor.
RPC	download	Adelene W. Ng	2001-06-26	0.1	RPC (Remote Procedure Call) Specification grammar; tested on JavaCC 2.0.
RTF	download	David Rosenstrauch	2001-10-11	1.0	A grammar for RTF (Rich Text Format) documents (frequently used with the Microsoft Word word processor, as well as several others).
RTF	download	Eric Friedman	2001-10-31		JavaCC grammar for parsing RTF files. This parser handles unicode RTF as well as double byte RTF files used to represent Asian character sets. Jar file includes the RTFParser.jj grammar, source for a parser delegate interface for applications to implement when they need to respond to RTF events and a copy of the LGPL license.
Simkin	download	Simon Whiteside	2001-01-02	1.1	Simkin is a high-level lightweight embeddable scripting language which works with Java or C++ and XML.
SpecC	download	H. Chen Rukhsana Alam	2001-06-15		The SpecC is a system-level design and specification language developed in University of California, Irvine. Since SpecC is a superset of C, we built this grammar file based on the C grammar file contributed by Mr.Doug South.
SPL	download	Ken Beesley	2001-02-21		A modification of one of the example grammars that is part of the standard JavaCC download. The original example is /examples/Interpreter/ which implements a small language called SPL (stupid programming language). The original example parses, gets an AST tree and then interprets the tree by calling the interpret() method in the root node, which in turn calls interpret() methods in the daughter nodes. The hand-written interpreter code is therefore spread out through all the various AST class files.
SQL	download	Ramanathane	1997-04-09	0.5	Grammar for PL/SQL inside Oracle*Forms 4.5(i.e. PlSql 1.x).
SQL	download	Kevin			Parser for Oracle SQL.
STEP	download	Singva Ma	1999-08-18		STEP Clear Text Encoding syntax is used along with the EXPRESS language to exchange neutral files between CAD systems. The description of the syntax can be found in ISO 10303-21.
StruQL		Mary Fernandez Dana Florescu Alon Levy Dan Suciu		0.4	Strudel is a web-site management system developed at AT&T Labs — Research. Its query language, StruQL, specifies how a Web site is constructed from the source data modeled by a data graph. No longer supported.
Visual Basic	download	Paul Cager	2002-03-13	3.0	UPDATED: A JavaCC parser for Visual Basic, using JJTree to generate an AST. The grammar supports most VB constructs and could be used as a starting point for an ASP grammar.
VRML	download	Koen Hendrickx			Covers most of VRML 1.0 specification proposed as IEEE 1076.1.
VRML		Satoshi Konno		1.1 beta	CyberVRML97 for Java is a development library of VRML97/2.0 applications. Using the library, you can easily read and write the VRML files, set and get the scenegraph information, draw the geometries, run the behaviors. Everyone can use the library free for commerce or an individual purpose. Now called CyberX3D and ported to Xerces.
XML		Patrice Bonhomme	1998-07-13	0.5	XSilfide is a client/server based environment for distributing language resources. Part of the XSilfide components is SXP (Silfide XML Parser — a parser and a complete XML API in Java). More in detail, it supports XML 1.0 (REC 1998-02-10), XML NameSpace (WD 1998-03-27), Document Object Model Level 1 (DOM Core and XML, WD 1998-04-16), XLink (WD 1998-03-03) and XPointer (WD 1998-03-03). From their project home page, follow Technology and SXP to download the package.
XML		Norbert H. Mikula	1997-05-08	0.97	NXP is a (validating) XML (eXtensible Markup Language) parser. (It appears that NXP is no longer public software — commercial product was available at www.datachannel.com, but this does not include JavaCC source code. The above link has the last-known public distribution version.) Norbert Mikula co-authored XML For Dummies. He died in 2009.
XML-QL	download	Alin Deutsch Mary Fernandez Dana Florescu Alon Levy Dan Suciu Wang-Chiew Tan		0.9	Data extraction, conversion, transformation and integration are all well-understood database problems. Their solutions rely on a query language, either relational (SQL) or object-oriented (OQL). Unlike relational or object-oriented data, XML is semistructured, i.e., it can have irregular and extensible structure and its attributes, or schema, are stored with the data. XML-QL is a query-language for XML and is suitable for performing the above tasks. No longer supported.
XPath/XSLT	download download	Ingo Macherius	1999-08-19	1.1	This distribution contains a JavaCC generated Parser and two frontends for testing. Look at the source code for some configurable options. To change options the frontends need to be recompiled. The grammar is straightforward from the drafts. It is not optimized for speed and had little to no checking for correctness beside a tiny regression test on all examples from the W3C drafts. The grammar implements XPath/XSLT patterns as of 1999-08-13.
XQuery	download	W3C XML Query Working Group	2001-01-26		This specification describes a new query language called XQuery (successor of Quilt), which is designed to be broadly applicable across all types of XML data sources. See Appendix G.

Learning More

Book referral for Generating Parsers with JavaCC

	recommend book⇒Generating Parsers with JavaCC
	by	Tom Copeland	978-0-9762214-3-2	paperback
	publisher	Centennial
	published	2007
You can also order direct from the author. Also covers JJTree, JTB and JJDoc. It explains how to write Unicode parsers to handle a much richer character set than in traditional in languages. It covers integration with Eclipse, but not IntelliJ. The documentation for JavaCC is scattered over the web. This book helps you find it all. The book treats the reader gently. There is plenty of repetition, full explanation, examples, comments about what is going on under the hood and pointing out of pitfalls. He even tells you what the various tools he is describing are useful for. You can tell he as been around the block and is talking from hard-won experience. It is like talking with a fellow programmer over coffee. He has a very kind friendly way of writing. His only fault is a tendency to belabour the obvious. Not available in bookstores. Try the publisher Centennial books.
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