ANTLR v3 C# Code generator and Runtime library
Kunle Odutola
kunle UNDERSCORE odutola AT hotmail.com
Micheal Jordan
Contents
Status
As of April 2007, the C# code generator and runtime are compatible with ANTLR v3.0b8. As before, development progress is likely to be sporadic.
The code generation templates and the runtime library itself are essentially feature complete with respect to the reference Java version in v3.0b8. The C# (and Python) targets have a definite advantage due to the existence of native StringTemplate implementations. Unfortunately, automated tests are yet to be written for the target. Some basic sanity check are done however - primarily checking that the sample grammars in the examples-v3 archive works as designed.
UPDATE: Some of the other targets apparently have some automated unit tests already. Hopefully this can suggest an approach that is applicable to the C# target too.
Architecture
As with all other targets, the C# code generation and runtime are modelled on the Java version. This means the C# target supports features such as grammar development/prototyping and remote debugging with the AntlrWorks GUI which is very important for ANTLR users. Developing radically different code output is left as an exercise to the reader 
Target Platforms
Microsoft .NET v1.1 and v2.0
Mono
Supported build tools
Microsoft Visual Studio 2003 and 2005
Nant v0.85
Performance
The V3 target generates code that is easily faster than that generated by the V2 target (especially the lexers). We probably won't be able to match the bare-metal performance of the code generated by Jim Idle's C target or Ric Klaren's C++ target but, we expect to be very competitive with the other targets.
Usage
Generating C# code from a grammar
To specify that the ANTLR tool should generate C# code (rather than the default of generating Java code) for a grammar, set the grammar-level option named language to the value CSharp as shown below:
grammar MyGrammar;
options
{
language=CSharp;
}
// rest of grammar follows
....
Specifying the namespace for your recognizer
Namespace can be set via:
@lexer::namespace {
mynamespace.parser
}
@parser::namespace {
mynamespace.parser
}