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antlr
antlr4
Java2016–2025
antlr / antlr4

antlr4

ANTLR (ANother Tool for Language Recognition) is a powerful parser generator for reading, processing, executing, or translating structured text or binary files.

Web DevelopmentLanguages & Compilers
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
8Distinct people
11Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
19KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

ANTLR (ANother Tool for Language Recognition) is a powerful parser generator for reading, processing, executing, or translating structured text or binary files.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year11 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2016-04-22 18:35:57 UTC to 2025-09-07 17:58:37 UTC.

01232016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments20162017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC312
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

11 sources
mdaniel·Sep 7, 2025
SableCC used that visitor pattern for its outputs, and then immediately had an "empty implementation" of the interface to allow folks to subsclass the parts that were relevant https://github.com/SableCC/sablecc/blob/sablecc-4-beta.4/src... https://github.com/SableCC/sablecc/blob/sablecc-4-beta.4/src... https://github.com/SableCC/sablecc/blob/sablecc-4-beta.4/src... I think Antlr 4 does similar, I just haven't used it in as much anger because its runtime always jammed me up https://github.com/antlr/antlr4/blob/4.13.2/doc/listeners.md... I thought that IntelliJ did similarly but I am misremembering since they generate recursive descent style https://github.com/JetBrains/Grammar-Kit/blob/v2023.3/HOWTO....
In The Expression Problem and its solutions (2016)
specialist·Dec 19, 2022
> ...than it would be to learn the exact syntax and quirks and possibly bugs of someone else's implementation... Yup. Also, having deep knowledge of the language is required. SQLite's grammar is neat, modest. Creating a compatible parser would make a fun project. Here's a pretty good example: https://github.com/bkiers/sqlite-parser (Actual ANTLR 4 grammar: https://github.com/bkiers/sqlite-parser/blob/master/src/main... ) Postgres, which tries to be compliant with the latest standards, however... SQL-2016 is a beast. Not to mention all the dialects. I'm updating my personal (soon to be FOSS) SQL DML grammar from ANTLR 3 LL(k) to ANTLR 4 ALL(Star). I've long had a working knowledge of SQL-92, with some SQL-1999 (eg common table expressions). But all the new structures and extensions are a bit overwhelming. Fortunately, ANTLR project has ~do
Read the rest
zen FOSS grammars to learn from. https://github.com/antlr/grammars-v4/tree/master/sql They mostly mechanically translate BNFs to LL(k) with some ALL(Star). Meaning few take advantage of left-recursion. https://github.com/antlr/antlr4/blob/master/doc/left-recursi... Honestly, I struggled to understand these grammars. Plus, not being conversant with the SQL-2016 was a huge impediment. Just finding a succinct corbis of test cases was a huge hurdle for me. Fortunately, the H2 Database project is a great resource. https://github.com/h2database/h2database/tree/master/h2/src/... Now for the exciting conclusion... My ANTLR grammar which passes all of H2's tests diverges significantly from the official or product specific BNFs. Mostly wrt recursion. Further, I found discrepancies between misc product's BNFs and their implementations. So a lot of trial & error is required for a "real world" parser. Which would explain why the professional SQL parsing tools ask for money. I still think creating a parser for SQLite is a great project. Hand-made or using grammar toolkit of choice. (I hope to play around with Pratt and PEG parsers some day.)
In SQLite internals: How the most-used database works
bd82·Mar 5, 2020
Even the Antlr FAQ mentions that "almost no one uses parser generators to build commercial compilers." * https://github.com/antlr/antlr4/blob/master/doc/faq/general.... * See: "What do you think are the problems people will try to solve with ANTLR4?" question I've used several different parser generators in the past. But I've also transitioned to hand-rolled recursive decent parsers, being Lazy I've created a library to assist in hand-rolling a recursive decent parser: https://github.com/SAP/chevrotain
In Why not to use (f)lex, yacc or bison
bmn__·Jul 31, 2018
Owl is much more limited. That's not a problem because the documentation tells outright what it can and can't do and what it's for; experts can get things done better if we have specialised tools for different tasks. ANTLR claims to be a general parser¹ but it falls short of its promise. People should stop using it; the software is popular only due to its relentless marketing, but not actually very good. It does not return all possible results for ambiguous grammars. It fails dozens of torture tests, including any grammar that's left-recursive, those cause the software to abort at compile time. You can't simply implement a huge number of language descriptions with it. Instead of simply admitting the algorithm's flaw, the maintainer would rather misdirect in bug reports. I find this disgusting. If you want a general parser that does not di
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sappoint, get Marpa/libmarpa. ¹ https://github.com/antlr/antlr4/blob/4.6/doc/getting-started... "ANTLR v4 takes whatever you give it--it just doesn't give a crap!"
In Show HN: Owl, a new kind of parser generator
bd82·Oct 17, 2017
One option would be to use a Parser that supports fault tolerance and error recovery. In hand crafted parsers this error recovery may be added manually (but resulting in a-lot of work...) For example: search for the word "recovery" in the TypeScript parser which is used to provide Language Services for the VSCode IDE. https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/blob/master/src/comp... Automatic Error Recovery using heuristics can also be implemented by parsing Libraries. In the world of JavaScript I'm familiar with two libraries that support Error Recovery: Antlr4 - https://github.com/antlr/antlr4 Chevrotain - https://github.com/SAP/chevrotain (disclaimer - I'm the author of Chevrotain)
In Ohm: Parsing Made Easy

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