[llvm-dev] TableGen enhancements

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos via llvm-dev]

Now that I've learned my way around TableGen just a bit, I'd like to solicit
suggestions for improving and enhancing it.

Perhaps there are some lexical changes that could improve readability of .td
files (e.g., I'm planning to enhance the lexer to allow an apostrophe as a
digit group separator in integers, a la C++).

Perhaps there are some syntactic enhancements that would make .td files
easier to read and write.

Perhaps there are common portions of .td files that can be factored out to
reduce future duplications, as with Automaton.td and SearchableTable.td.

Perhaps there are common portions of TableGen backends that can be factored
out to reduce future efforts, resulting in some general-purpose library
methods.

Perhaps there are new features in TableGen that, coupled with enhanced or
new C++ files, would open up possibilities for using TableGen in new areas
of the target-independent code generator.

I don't know how much people have thought about this, but I'm interested in
any ideas you may have.