What is the best way to reuse the Lua parser?

Question

I know how to embed Lua in other languages, but I would like to re-use ONLY the parser to parse code and give me the result as AST for instance. What is the easiest way of doing that with the Lua platform?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Someone already made an ANTLR grammar for the Lua language:

http://www.antlr3.org/grammar/1178608849736/Lua.g

Or if you're using ANTLR v4:

https://github.com/antlr/grammars-v4/blob/master/lua/Lua.g4

I've used ANTLR on a couple projects with good results. It will generate a C (ANTLR v3) or C++ (ANTLR v2) parser including AST generation if you ask for it.