1 Introduction
Date: 2003-11-11 18:03:00

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## Chapter 1
Introduction

### 1.1 Introduction

TPG (Toy Parser Generator) is a Python1 parser generator. It is aimed at easy usage rather than performance. My inspiration was drawn from two different sources. The first was GEN6. GEN6 is a parser generator created at ENSEEIHT2 where I studied. The second was PROLOG3, especially DCG4 parsers. I wanted a generator with a simple and expressive syntax and the generated parser should work as the user expects. So I decided that TPG should be a recursive descendant parser (a rule is a procedure that calls other procedures) and the grammars are attributed (attributes are the parameters of the procedures). This way TPG can be considered as a programming language or more modestly as Python extension.

### 1.2 License

TPG is available under the GNU Lesser General Public.

Toy Parser Generator: A Python parser generator

Copyright (C) 2002 Christophe Delord

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

### 1.3 Structure of the document

Part I
  starts smoothly with a gentle tutorial as an introduction. I think this tutorial may be sufficent to start with TPG.
Part II
  is a reference documentation. It will detail TPG as much as possible.
Part III
  gives the reader some examples to illustrate TPG.

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