Assaulting the Tower of Babel: Experiences with a Translator Writing System

TRUST is a translator writing system (TWS) which evolved from several available TWS components, including an LR (k) parser generator and a lexical scanner generator. The design and historical development of TRUST are briefly presented, but the paper is primarily concerned with relating critically the experiences gained in applying the TWS to various practical software projects and to the classroom environment. These experiences lead to a discussion of how a modular TWS should be designed and implemented.