#!/usr/bin/perl -ws # THE COMMONEST REASON FOR WANTING LEFT RECURSION use strict; use Parse::RecDescent; $::RD_HINT = 1; my $parse = Parse::RecDescent->new(<<'EndGrammar'); main: expr /\Z/ { $item[1] } | expr: left_assoc[qw{term add_op term}] | term add_op: '+' { sub { $_[0] + $_[1] } } | '-' { sub { $_[0] - $_[1] } } term: left_assoc[qw{factor mult_op factor}] | factor mult_op: '*' { sub { $_[0] * $_[1] } } | '/' { sub { $_[0] / $_[1] } } factor: number | '(' expr ')' { $item[2] } number: /[-+]?\d+(\.\d+)?/ # THE BLACK MAGIC THAT MAKES IT WORK... left_assoc: left_assoc_left[@arg[0,1]](s) { my @terms = $item[1] ? ((map { @$_ } @{$item[1]}), $item[2]) : $item[1]; splice @terms, 0, 3, $terms[1]->(@terms[0,2]) while @terms>1; $terms[0]; } left_assoc_left: { [ @item[1..2] ] } EndGrammar while () { print $parse->main($_), "\n"; } __DATA__ +1-1+1-1+1-1+1-1+1 7*7-6*8 121/(121/11)/121*11 1/(10-1/(1/(10-1)))