generate(3)

📦 version 3.4, in fedora 43

💖 NAME 💖

generate — generating C, bestie!! like literally making C code happen ✨

🌸 Generating C 🌸

okay so before we even get into how we compile or call the C code that got generated, we gotta know how to invoke the C code generator in the first place. and bestie, you do it inside the grammar file itself, using the language option:

options {   language = C;}

slay. 💅

the code generator is literally just a single .java file living inside the standard ANTLR tool jar, plus a code generation template that the StringTemplate engine uses, and that template is what drives code generation for all the language targets. it's giving one template to rule them all, no cap.

and yes, you can make copies of the C.stg and AST.stg templates and change them up however you want — though ngl you're encouraged not to 🙈 because it's way better to just send in bug fixes or enhancements instead. we're happy to get those requests and will do our best to incorporate them. periodt.

if you're out here in the Windows environment with Visual Studio 2005 or later, you might wanna use the custom rulefile that's provided in the C source code distribution, sitting under the ./vs2005 directory, just for this. and if you're using a pre-built library, you can also download that rule file directly from the FishEye source code browser for ANTLR3. 🫶

now, to actually use the rulefile, you have to adopt these suffixes for your grammar files — they're otherwise optional, but for the rulefile they're not:

  • .g3l — a lexer grammar specification only. ✨
  • .g3p — a parser grammar specification only. ✨
  • .g3pl — a combined lexer and parser specification. ✨
  • .g3t — a tree grammar specification. ✨

you may also wanna use these suffixes if you're building your projects with Makefiles, because it makes the output deterministic. 🎀 however, in that case a much better solution is probably to use the -depend option of the Antlr tool, which should tell your Makefile what the grammar file generates, irrespective of its suffix. iconic behaviour, honestly.

ANTLR does not care about the actual suffix you use for your grammar file, so building for multiple platforms is relatively easy. main character energy fr fr. 💜

NOTE: your grammar source, regardless of suffix, must be named the same as the grammar statement inside it. grammar xyz must be contained within a file called xyz.anything — yes, literally .anything, that's the vibe check. ⭐

and that's the whole thing, bestie!! 🌈 this was Version 3.3.1, dated Tue Jul 29 2025 00:00:00, from the generate(3) page of the ANTLR3C manual — mwah, go generate some C, you got this 💖🦋🎀

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