ANTLR

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In computer based language recognition, ANTLR is the name of a parser generator that uses LL(k) parsing. ANTLR's predecessor is a parser generator known as PCCTS.

ANTLR stands for "ANother Tool for Language Recognition". Given that ANTLR is in competition with LR parser generators, the alternative reading "ANT(i)-LR" may not be accidental. ANTLR rules are expressed in a format deliberately similar to EBNF instead of the regular expression syntax employed by other parser generators.

At the moment, ANTLR supports generating code in the following languages: C++, Java, Python, C#. ANTLR 3 is under a 3-clause BSD License.

For an introduction, see the ANTLR tutorial at the University of Birmingham. For background on the theory, see articles from the ANTLR pages, e.g. an ANTLR journal paper.

Several plugins have been developed for the Eclipse development environment to support the ANTLR grammar. There is ANTLR Studio, a proprietary product, as well as the ANTLR plugin for Eclipse hosted on Sourceforge