[GD-General] Text file parsing

[Marc F. <mf...@pu...>]

Hello,

I'm currently writing a toolkit that will be used as a basis for my next
game engine. It will feature one or several editing tools for content
creation, as one of the objective is to be data-driven. In the process,
I plan to use some intermediate text-based file formats, such as ASE for
meshes (easy to export from any modelling packages), text
shaders/material files and so on.

My question is about the best way of writing file-parsers for these
files. I can see currently 2 options 

1) use some tools like Lex&Yacc 
- Pros : easy to use, fast development time, easy to make the grammar
evolve
- Cons : for now, I was unable to make Lex&Yacc create some nice C++
parser class that can be embedded in my tools.

2) write my own from scratch, maybe first writing a DumbParser class
that just provides with a bunch of basic string function, acting like a
Lexer and derive the different needed parsers from that, embedding the
grammar inside
- Pros : full control on the design and the implementation, in
comparison to the obfuscated code from Ley/Yacc
- Cons : more development time, grammar kind of hardcoded so not easily
maintainable, I'm not very experienced in writing text parsers :)

I wonder how people handle file parsing in their projects.
Thanks for your help.

-Marc