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From: erik@romax3b2.UUCP (Erik Murrey)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.sysadmin,comp.sources.wanted,comp.sources.d,comp.unix.xenix
Subject: Re: Please remove PD-YACC sources from your machine IMMEDIATELY
Summary: trade secrets?
Message-ID: <247@romax3b2.UUCP>
Date: 6 Jul 88 14:48:06 GMT
References: <3532@rpp386.UUCP> <135@dcs.UUCP> <235@pigs.UUCP>
Followup-To: news.admin
Organization: ROMAX Computer Company, Thousand Oaks, CA
Lines: 26

In article <235@pigs.UUCP>, haugj@pigs.UUCP (Joe Bob Willie) writes:
> In article <135@dcs.UUCP> wnp@dcs.UUCP (Wolf N. Paul) writes:
> >2. If they are reacting to the name YACC, does this mean that they ARE
> >   moving towards considering the names of *NIX utilities their property
> >   which no-one else may use? If so, where does this leave such products
> >   as MINIX, MKS, etc.?
> 
> no, they seem to be aiming at the source itself, or possibly the ideas
> contained in the source.  i'm not certain.  i don't know how this will
> affect unix-like utilities.  it may affect clones which are not exact
> source ripoffs, but say, used the exact same algorithms.  for example,
> a yacc clone which built a lalr(0) parser identical to the real yacc
> might be more in danger than one which built a lr(0) or lr(1) parser.

I remember reading a paper which was the basis of YACC's algorithms.
I think it was in CACM, something like "Deterministic Parsing of
Ambiguous Grammars"  (I may be way off here...).  It discussed
disambiguating rules for shift-reduce and shift-shift confilcts, and
how to incorporate them into a lalr(0) parser generator such as YACC.

Wouldn't this nullify any claim for trade secrets within YACC?

---
Erik Murrey
erik@mpx1.UUCP
...!{bpa,vu-vlsi,cbmvax}!mpx1!erik
ok, so my spelling sucks... what do you want?