Re: bison patch to help gcc?

[Paul Eggert]

> > Bison currently generates GLR parsers too, which should be enough to
> > handle any weird constructs that the C and C++ language designers can
> > think of.
> 
> Doesn't that algorithm have exponential space and time requirements?

Worst-case, yes.  But those cases shouldn't arise for C or C++
grammars, in practice.  For most practical grammars, the GLR
algorithms give linear performance, just like LALR(1).

For a few more details, please see:

John Aycock
Why Bison is Becoming Extinct
ACM Crossroads 
http://www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds7-5/bison.html

This article is dated, as it was written before GLR support was added
to Bison.