Oh, thank you! I was wondering if I was an outlier.
I have no idea if the above observations are generally true, but that’s been my experience with the handful of parsers I’ve thrown away because they get too unwieldy for what I want.
My first production-quality parser was for the `bc` language, which is specified in a standard.
But your experience is just as valid as mine.
I had a friend in college who nearly always solved problems 'backwards' to everyone else cause it's just how her brain worked, like we'd do a standard for(int i = 0; i < length; i++) and she'd have for(int i = length; i >=0; i--) kinda backwards.
I don't question it at this point anymore and just marvel at the mathematical validity of it all.