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"Tree-sitter - a new parsing system for programming tools" by Max Brunsfeld

Strange Loop Conference · talk · Watch on YouTube

Compilers, interpreters & program analysisTesting, debugging & developer tools

What it is

Max Brunsfeld introduces Tree-sitter, a parsing system for developer tools that offers incremental parsing and robust error recovery through a uniform C API. The talk explains the design, based on LR extended to GLR parsing.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN points to it as the best explanation of tree-sitter's design choices and as an accessible introduction to parser generators.

  • 4 people recommended it
  • 4 different months
  • 1 strong recommendations
  • first 2018, last 2024

What HN commenters said

  1. “Highly recommend Max Brunsfield's strange loop talk if you want to learn more about the design choices behind tree-sitter”

    Explains design choices behind tree-sitter

    ievans, 2024-03 · Strong recommendation · in “Difftastic, a structural diff tool that understands syntax”

  2. “For a really nice solution to the error message problem, see this recent strangeloop talk”

    Clever GLR-based approach to better parser error messages

    lemming, 2018-11 · Recommendation · in “Owl: Parser generator for visibly pushdown languages”

  3. “If you haven't seen the Strange Loop conference talk on tree-sitter [2] yet, it's worth a watch.”

    Talk on tree-sitter's design and goals

    rtsao, 2020-10 · Recommendation · in “Introducing Semgrep and r2c”

  4. “I also enjoyed the Treesitter talk from 5 years ago by Max Brunsfeld”

    Taught commenter about parser generators without CS background

    AlexErrant, 2023-12 · Recommendation · in “Lessons from building GitHub code search [video]”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: tree-sitter, parsing, glr, error recovery, developer tools, editors

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