ANTLR
ANTLR (ANother Tool for Language Recognition) is a powerful parser generator for reading, processing, executing, or translating structured text or binary files. It takes a grammar file as input and generates source code for a parser that can build and walk parse trees, making it widely used for building languages, tools, and frameworks. It supports multiple target languages, including Java, C#, Python, JavaScript, Go, C++, and Swift.
Developers should learn ANTLR when they need to create custom domain-specific languages (DSLs), implement compilers or interpreters, or process complex structured data formats like configuration files, query languages, or protocol buffers. It is particularly valuable in projects involving language processing, such as static code analysis tools, data transformation pipelines, or educational compilers, due to its robust grammar definition and automatic parse tree generation.