ANTLR important language syntaxes

* Rules begins with lower case

* Token types begins with upper case letter

* Lexer rules are given in upper case.

* x | y | z - match any alternative: x or y or z

* x? - x is optional

* x* - x can present zero or more times

* x+ - x can present one or more times

* Lexer rules are always tokens and should be given in upper case. Methods related to lexer rules are prefixed with 'm'.

Reference: The defenitive antlr reference - building domain specific languages

ANTLR FAQ

Does ANTLR knows about a specific language?
No. It recognizes the language using the provided grammar*.
ANTLR can generate a recognizer which will get a particular sentence or phrase as an input and apply the grammatical structure defined in grammar files for those input symbols.

These recognizers can be implemented using different language targets such as C# or Java.

What do you mean by grammar?
Using the grammar, we can tell ANTR how a particular language looks like, so that ANTLR can identify that. Grammar describes a syntax of a language.
Grammar will consist of set of language rules*. Grammar notation used is BNF*.

What is a rule?
A rule represents a phrase or sentence of the language.
Each rule may consist of one of more alternatives sub rules. Rules are invoked in a recursive manner.

Example for BNF notation?
Postal address ::= Name Route City Country
Name ::= First name Middle name? Last name
Route ::= Route name part*

What is a token file?
Token file can be considered as vocabulary for the grammar of specific language.

What is a target language?
Target language is a computer language which ANTLR can generate the recognizer from.

What are actions?
Actions are code blocks written in target language. Actions can refer tokens, rules or character reference using element labels. (x = T where x - label name, T - token)

How to fix "TypeInitializationException"?

This exception is thrown as a wrapper around the exception thrown by the class initializer.
Best thing is to check the inner exception details. (View details)

I got the following exception:
The type initializer for 'Antlr.StringTemplate.StringTemplate' threw an exception

Due to one assembly missing:

{"Could not load file or assembly 'antlr.runtime, Version=2.7.7.3, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=d7701e059243744f' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.":"antlr.runtime, Version=2.7.7.3, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=d7701e059243744f"}

I could fix this after I add antlr.runtime dll as a reference to the project.