[clang] [Docs] Some updates to the Clang user's manual (PR #151702)
Aaron Ballman via cfe-commits
cfe-commits at lists.llvm.org
Fri Aug 1 07:22:04 PDT 2025
================
@@ -60,29 +60,46 @@ features that depend on what CPU architecture or operating system is
being compiled for. Please see the :ref:`Target-Specific Features and
Limitations <target_features>` section for more details.
-The rest of the introduction introduces some basic :ref:`compiler
-terminology <terminology>` that is used throughout this manual and
-contains a basic :ref:`introduction to using Clang <basicusage>` as a
-command line compiler.
-
.. _terminology:
Terminology
-----------
+* Lexer -- the part of the compiler responsible for converting source code into
+ abstract representations called tokens.
+* Preprocessor -- the part of the compiler responsible for in-place textual
+ replacement of source constructs. When the lexer is required to produce a
+ token, it will run the preprocessor while determining which token to produce.
+ In other words, when the lexer encounters something like `#include` or a macro
+ name, the preprocessor will be used to perform the inclusion or expand the
+ macro name into its replacement list, and return the resulting non-preprocessor
+ token.
+* Parser -- the part of the compiler responsible for determining syntactic
+ correctness of the source code. The parser will request tokens from the lexer
+ and after performing semantic analysis of the production, generates an
----------------
AaronBallman wrote:
Funny enough, I had written something for it but noticed we don't talk about Sema much in the user's manual (more of an internals manual thing). But I'll add it back and add a link to the internals manual here as well.
https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/pull/151702
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