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When it was released, PCCTS supported C as its only target language, but through consulting with NeXT Computer, PCCTS gained C++ support after 1994. ItPCCTS's immediate successor was ANTLR 2 and it supported Java, C# and Python as target languages in addition to C++. ANTLR 3 already supports Java, C#, Objective C, C, Python and Ruby as target languages and you can add your own. Support for additional target languages including C++, Perl6 and Oberon (yes, Oberon) is either expected or already in progress. This is all due in part to the fact that it is much easier to add support for a target language (or customize the code generated by an existing target) in ANTLR 3.
What does ANTLR 3 do?
Put simply, ANTLR 3 generates - the source code for - language processing tools from a grammatical description. To this end, it is commonly categorised as a compiler generator or compiler compiler in the tradition of tools such as Lex/Flex and Yacc/Bison). ANTLR 3 can generate the source code for various tools that can be used to analyze and transform input in the language defined by the input grammar. The basic types of language processing tools that ANTLR can generates are Lexers (a.k.a scanners, tokenizers), Parsers and TreeParsers (a.k.a tree walkers, c.f. visitors).
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