Grammar Engineering Frequently Asked Questions

What is a type addendum statement, and when should I use one?

Type addendum statements are a recent extension to tdl syntax. Type addendum statements allow you add information to a previously defined type. Prior to the development of the Matrix, there wasn’t really a need for this kind of functionality: if you wanted to add to a type, you could just edit its defintion. However, we strongly discourage editing the matrix files (particularly matrix.tdl) when building a grammar from the Matrix.

You may find that you would like to add a feature to an existing type (notably the values of HEAD), or add a constraint to an existing type. To some extent, this can be done by adding subtypes, but this can become awkward.

A type addendum statement looks like this:

existing-type :+ new-supertype & 
"documentation string"
   [ EXISTING-FEATURE more-specific-value,
     NEW-FEATURE some-value ].

Unlike type definitions, type addendum statements use :+ instead of :=. Type addendum statements are only valid with existing types. There must be at least one piece of information after the :+: a new supertype, a documentation string (in quotes), or a constraint (in square brackets), or any combination of those. Note that it’s not valid to specify a supertype in a type addendum which is already a supertype of the type in question.

In general, if you would like to add information to a type already declared in the Matrix, a type addendum statement is the way to go. For types that are defined in language-specific files, it’s probably best to avoid type addenda.

Related topics

• What do the punctuation marks mean in the tdl files? (A very basic guide to tdl syntax.)
• I’m trying to add a new feature, but the LKB doesn’t like it. What should I do?

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Last update: 2023-06-30 by EricZinda [edit]