[Lazarus] Using FPC parser/tokenizer for code formatting

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Sat, 29 May 2010, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote:

>> So I simply don't think
>> that this can be achieved in a reasonable time. IMO the effort to do so
>> should be spent in existing pascal parsers.
>
> Just the number of existing Pascal parsers suggests to me that time is spent 
> *better* in a front-end unification, than in maintaining and synchronizing 
> any number of independent parsers.

That is why FPC provides one in fpc-passrc: so other people will not
try to re-invent the wheel.

It is currently used in 3 projects
- fpdoc
- WST to generate interface descriptions
- A project I am working on to convert pascal code to JavaScript.
   (see also the fcl-js sources)

This is also the reason I contracted Matthias to extend fcl-passrc.

All in all, I think it would be to everyones advantage if we could
concentrate on fcl-passrc. It is by far the most compatible engine
out there, and is sure to remain maintained (for fpdoc) and extended
whenever the compiler is extended.

I think this is a far more realistic scheme than trying to extract
the scanner/parser from the compiler.

Michael.