meta 0.5--Copyright (c) 1999 David Lichteblau <lichtebl@math.fu-berlin.de>


This is an implementation of Meta, a technique used to simplify the task
of writing parsers.  [Baker] describes Meta and shows the main ideas for
an implementation in Common Lisp.

	  If all META did was recognize regular expressions, it would
	  not be very useful. It is a programming language, however,
	  and the operations [], {} and $ correspond to the Common
	  Lisp control structures AND, OR, and DO.[8] Therefore, we
	  can utilize META to not only parse, but also to
	  transform. In this way, META is analogous to "attributed
	  grammars" [Aho86], but it is an order of magnitude simpler
	  and more efficient. Thus, with the addition of the "escape"
	  operation "!", which allows us to incorporate arbitrary Lisp
	  expressions into META, we can not only parse integers, but
	  produce their integral value as a result.  [Baker]

The macro defined here is an attempt to implement Meta (with slightly
adapted syntax) for Dylan.  It is functional, but not yet optimized.


History
=======

0.5
  - use libtool

0.4
  - unique unique-id-base
  - added makefile with `make install' support
  - Replaced ?meta:token (wrong) with ?meta:* (correct).
    Thanks to <chris@cnd.co.nz>.

0.3
  - fixed `type(variable)'
  - void type declarations again...
  - new pseudo-function `accept'
  - subroutines (new feature, not documented)

0.2
  - created Meta library
  - major cleanup
  - `with-collector'
  - new documentation
  - fixed `store!' (now called `set!') and some type declarations.
    (Thanks to <keith@harlequin.co.uk>).

0.1 meta.dylan in dfingerd-0.1


Documentation
=============

	See Meta.html and With-collector.html.


Harlequin Dylan support
=======================

meta 0.3 has been reported to compile with Harlequin Dylan, but some
modifications will be necessary:
  - SUBSEQUENCE is not supported.  Try to use COPY-SEQUENCE.
  - meta-library.dylan has to be adapted, because Meta is not
    COMMON-DYLAN-aware yet.
Stay tuned for release 0.5.


Installation using Gwydion Dylan
================================

Compilation using d2c (obviously Mindy won't work):

	$ make                         # d2c meta.lid

Testing:

	example$ make                  # d2c -L.. example.lid
	example$ ./example

Automatic installation (requires Gwydion Dylan 2.3.1):

	$ make install