Creating a simple parser in (V)C++ (2010) similar to PEG - c++

For an school project, I need to parse a text/source file containing a simplified "fake" programming language to build an AST. I've looked at boost::spirit, however since this is a group project and most seems reluctant to learn extra libraries, plus the lecturer/TA recommended leaning to create a simple one on C++. I thought of going that route. Is there some examples out there or ideas on how to start? I have a few attempts but not really successful yet ...
parsing line by line
Test each line with a bunch of regex (1 for procedure/function declaration), one for assignment, one for while etc...
But I will need to assume there are no multiple statements in one line: eg. a=b;x=1;
When I reach a container statement, procedures, whiles etc, I will increase the indent. So all nested statements will go under this
When I reach a } I will decrement indent
Any better ideas or suggestions? Example code I need to parse (very simplified here ...)
procedure Hello {
a = 1;
while a {
b = a + 1 + z;
}
}
Another idea was to read whole file into a string, and go top down. Match all procedures, then capture everything in { ... } then start matching statements (end with ;) or containers while { ... }. This is similar to how PEG does things? But I will need to read entire file

Multipass makes things easier. On a first pass, split things into tokens, like "=", or "abababa", or a quote-delimited string, or a block of whitespace. Don't be destructive (keep the original data), but break things down to simple chunks, and maybe have a little struct or enum that describes what the token is (ie, whitespace, a string literal, an identifier type thing, etc).
So your sample code gets turned into:
identifier(procedure) whitespace( ) identifier(Hello) whitespace( ) operation({) whitespace(\n\t) identifier(a) whitespace( ) operation(=) whitespace( ) number(1) operation(;) whitespace(\n\t) etc.
In those tokens, you might also want to store line number and offset on the line (this will help with error message generation later).
A quick test would be to turn this back into the original text. Another quick test might be to dump out pretty-printed version in html or something (where you color whitespace to have a pink background, identifiers as light blue, operations as light green, numbers as light orange), and see if your tokenizer is making sense.
Now, your language may be whitespace insensitive. So discard the whitespace if that is the case! (C++ isn't, because you need newlines to learn when // comments end)
(Note: a professional language parser will be as close to one-pass as possible, because it is faster. But you are a student, and your goal should be to get it to work.)
So now you have a stream of such tokens. There are a bunch of approaches at this point. You could pull out some serious parsing chops and build a CFG to parse them. (Do you know what a CFG is? LR(1)? LL(1)?)
An easier method might be to do it a bit more ad-hoc. Look for operator({) and find the matching operator(}) by counting up and down. Look for language keywords (like procedure), which then expects a name (the next token), then a block (a {). An ad-hoc parser for a really simple language may work fine.
I've done exactly this for a ridiculously simple language, where the parser consisted of a really simple PDA. It might work for you guys. Or it might not.

Since you mentioned PEG i'll like to throw in my open source project : https://github.com/leblancmeneses/NPEG/tree/master/Languages/npeg_c++
Here is a visual tool that can export C++ version: http://www.robusthaven.com/blog/parsing-expression-grammar/npeg-language-workbench
Documentation for rule grammar: http://www.robusthaven.com/blog/parsing-expression-grammar/npeg-dsl-documentation
If i was writing my own language I would probably look at the terminals/non-terminals found in System.Linq.Expressions as these would be a great start for your grammar rules.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.linq.expressions.aspx
System.Linq.Expressions.Expression
System.Linq.Expressions.BinaryExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.BlockExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.ConditionalExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.ConstantExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.DebugInfoExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.DefaultExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.DynamicExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.GotoExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.IndexExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.InvocationExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.LabelExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.LambdaExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.ListInitExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.LoopExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.MemberExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.MemberInitExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.MethodCallExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.NewArrayExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.NewExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.ParameterExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.RuntimeVariablesExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.SwitchExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.TryExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.TypeBinaryExpression
System.Linq.Expressions.UnaryExpression

Related

notepad++ regex custom length word wrap macros

The time of day that you have missed. Recently I began to study the expressive expressions, but the task before me is too complicated.
I think many people need the ability to quickly format texts of almost any type. Problem is not easy and I hope to get a solution to this problem from professionals.
If you use a limited breakdown for each line, then only large lines are broken which is much better. That is, to break only those lines that are larger than a certain size and which are more or less evenly broken Correct formatting of the text is quite Difficult to take into account a lot, I will go out for a long time. As you can see, there are small lines and they have to be sent back by connecting the previous line, but the problem is. And again have to apply formatting. But it is unclear whether this new formatting will create new problems.
All this is write in the macro via notepad ++ one after another and use.
However, it is necessary to solve the most important problems:
It is important to
I want to immediately note: textFX does not offer. My attempts to write a macro with textFX (including attempts with 75 or a number from the clipboard failed, the text was written with unreadable code), I sent a corresponding message to the site notepad ++ a day ago
Use a regular point also do not offer. The fact is that notepad ++ macro does not understand the point of replacing the indentation with spaces by default 4pcs. (Yes, the macro must also indent the text, but this is all right)
About soft wordwrap (not formatted just click) is also not worth talking about.
inscrease line indent 2-4
split lines
descrease line indet 2-4
^(.?)$\s+?^(?=.^\1$) null
2017 (\d+:\d+) 17
subscribe .+$ null
(^.{1,30}$)\R \1
\r\r\n \n
^ spaces\1
i create macro and solved more problems

D: split string by comma, but not quoted string

I need to split string by comma, that not quoted like:
foo, bar, "hello, user", baz
to get:
foo
bar
hello, user
baz
Using std.csv:
import std.csv;
import std.stdio;
void main()
{
auto str = `foo,bar,"hello, user",baz`;
foreach (row; csvReader(str))
{
writeln(row);
}
}
Application output:
["foo", "bar", "hello, user", "baz"]
Note that I modified your CSV example data. As std.csv wouldn't correctly parse it, because of space () before first quote (").
You can use next snippet to complete this task:
File fileContent;
string fileFullName = `D:\code\test\example.csv`;
fileContent = File (fileFullName, "r");
auto r = regex(`(?!\B"[^"]*),(?![^"]*"\B)`);
foreach(line;fileContent.byLine)
{
auto result = split(line, r);
writeln(result);
}
If you are parsing a specific file format, splitting by line and using regex often isn't correct, though it will work in many cases. I prefer to read it in character by character and keep a few flags for state (or use someone else's function where appropriate that does it for you for this format). D has std.csv: http://dlang.org/phobos/std_csv.html or my old old csv.d which is minimal but basically works too: https://github.com/adamdruppe/arsd/blob/master/csv.d (haha 5 years ago was my last change to it, but hey, it still works)
Similarly, you can kinda sorta "parse" html with regex... sometimes, but it breaks pretty quickly outside of simple cases and you are better off using an actual html parser (which probably is written to read char by char!)
Back to quoted commas, reading csv, for example, has a few rules with quoted content: first, of course, commas can appear inside quotes without going to the next field. Second, newlines can also appear inside quotes without going to the next row! Third, two quote characters in a row is an escaped quote that is in the content, not a closing quote.
foo,bar
"this item has
two lines, a comma, and a "" mark!",this is just bar
I'm not sure how to read that with regex (eyeballing, I'm pretty sure yours gets the escaped quote wrong at least), but it isn't too hard to do when reading one character at a time (my little csv reader is about fifty lines, doing it by hand). Splitting the lines ahead of time also complicates compared to just reading the characters because you might then have to recombine lines later when you find one ends with a closing quote! And then your beautiful byLine loop suddenly isn't so beautiful.
Besides, when looking back later, I find simple character readers and named functions to be more understandable than a regex anyway.
So, your answer is correct for the limited scope you asked about, but might be missing the big picture of other cases in the file format you are actually trying to read.
edit: one last thing I want to pontificate on, these corner cases in CSV are an example of why people often say "don't reinvent the wheel". It isn't that they are really hard to handle - look at my csv.d code, it is short, pretty simple, and works at everything I've thrown at it - but that's the rub, isn't it? "Everything I've thrown at it". To handle a file format, you need to be aware of what the corner cases are so you can handle them, at least if you want it to be generic and take arbitrary user input. Knowing these edge cases tends to come more from real world experience than just taking a quick glance. Once you know them though, writing the code again isn't terribly hard, you know what to test for! But if you don't know it, you can write beautiful code with hundreds of unittests... but miss the real world case your user just happens to try that one time it matters.

Specific Regex Failing on Neko and Native

So I'm working on some cleanup in haxeflixel, and I need to validate a csv map, so I'm using a regex to check if its ok (don't mention the ending commas, I know thats not valid csv but I want to allow it), and I think I have a decent regex for doing that, and it seems to work well on flash, but c++ crashes, and neko gives me this error: An error occured while running pcre_exec....
here is my regex, I'm sorry its long, but I have no idea where the problem is...
^(([ ]*-?[0-9]+[ ]*,?)+\r?\n?)+$
if anyone knows what might be going on I'd appreciate it,
Thanks,
Nico
ps. there are probably errors in my regex for checking csv, but I can figure those out, its kind of enjoyable, I'd rather just know what specifically could be causing this:)
edit: ah, I've just noticed this doesn't happen on all strings, once I narrow it down to what strings, I will post one... as for what I'm checking for, its basically just to make sure theres no weird xml header, or any non integer value in the map file, basically it should validate this:
1,1,1,1
1,1,1,1
1,1,1,1
or this:
1,1,1,1,
1,1,1,1,
1,1,1,1,
but not:
xml blahh blahh>
1,m,1,1
1,1,b,1
1,1,1,1
xml>
(and yes I know thats not valid xml;))
edit: it gets stranger:
so I'm trying to determine what strings crash it, and while this still wouldnt explain a normal map crashing, its definatly weird, and has the same result:
what happens is:
this will fail a .match() test, but not crash:
a
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1
while this will crash the program:
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
1,*a*,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1
To be honest, you wrote one of the worst regexps I ever seen. It actually looks like it was written specifically to be as slow as possible. I write it not to offend you, but to express how much you need to learn to write regexps(hint: writing your own regexp engine is a good exercise).
Going to your problem, I guess it just runs out of memory(it is extremely memory intensive). I am not sure why it happens only on pcre targets(both neko and cpp targets use pcre), but I guess it is about memory limits per regexp run in pcre or some heuristics in other targets to correct such miswritten regexps.
I'd suggest something along the lines of
~/^(( *-?[0-9]+ *,)* *-?[0-9]+ *,?\r?\n)*(( *-?[0-9]+ *,)* *-?[0-9]+ *,?\r?\n?)$/
There, "~/" and last "/" are haxe regexp markers.
I wasnt extensively testing it, just a run on your samples, but it should do the job(probably with a bit of tweaking).
Also, just as a hint, I'd suggest you to split file into lines first before running any regexps, it will lower memmory usage(or you will need to hold only a part of your text in memory) and simplify your regexp.
I'd also note that since you will need to parse csv anyhow(for any properly formed input, which are prevailing in your data I guess), it might be much faster to do all the tests while actually parsing.
Edit: the answer to question "why it eats so much memory"
Well, it is not a short topic, and that's why I proposed to you to write your own regexp engine. There are some differences in implementations, but generally imagine regexp engine works like that:
parses your regular expression and builds a graph of all possible states(state is basically a symbol value and a number of links to other symbols which can follow it).
sets up a list of read pointer and state pointer pairs, current state list, consisting of regexp initial state and a pointer to matched string first letter
sets up read pointer to the first symbol of symbol string
sets up state poiter to initial state of regexp
takes up one pair from current state list and stores it as current state and current read pointer
reads symbol under current read pointer
matches it with symbols in states which current state have links to, and makes a list of states that matched.
if there is a final regexp state in this list, goes to 12
for each item in this list adds a pair of next read pointer(which is current+1) and item to the current state list
if the current state list is empty, returns false, as string didn't match the regexp
goes to 6
here it is, in a final state of matched regexp, returns true, string matches regexp.
Of course, there are some differences between regexp engines, and some of them eliminate some problems afaik. And of course they also have pseudosymbols, groupings, they need to store the positions regexp and groups matched, they have lookahead and lookbehind and also grouping references which makes it a bit(quite a humble measure) more complex and forces to use a bit more complex data structures, but the main idea is the same. So, here we are and your problem is clearly seen from algorithm. The less specific you are about what you want to match and the more there chances for engine to match the same substring as different paths in state graph, the more memory and processor time it will consume, exponentionally.
Try to model how regexp engine matches regexp (a+a+)+b on strings aaaaaab, ab, aa, aaaaaaaaaa, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa (Don't try the last one, it would take hours or days to compute on a modern PC.)
Also, it worth to note that some regexp engines do things in a bit different way so they can handle this situations properly, but there always are ways to make regexp extremely slow.
And another thing to note is that I may hav ebeen wrong about the exact memory problem. This case it may be processor too, and before that it may be engine limits on memory/processor kicking in, not exactly system starving of memory.

Indentation control while developing a small python like language

I'm developing a small python like language using flex, byacc (for lexical and parsing) and C++, but i have a few questions regarding scope control.
just as python it uses white spaces (or tabs) for indentation, not only that but i want to implement index breaking like for instance if you type "break 2" inside a while loop that's inside another while loop it would not only break from the last one but from the first loop as well (hence the number 2 after break) and so on.
example:
while 1
while 1
break 2
'hello world'!! #will never reach this. "!!" outputs with a newline
end
'hello world again'!! #also will never reach this. again "!!" used for cout
end
#after break 2 it would jump right here
but since I don't have an "anti" tab character to check when a scope ends (like C for example i would just use the '}' char) i was wondering if this method would the the best:
I would define a global variable, like "int tabIndex" on my yacc file that i would access in my lex file using extern. then every time i find a tab character on my lex file i would increment that variable by 1. when parsing on my yacc file if i find a "break" keyword i would decrement by the amount typed after it from the tabIndex variable, and when i reach and EOF after compiling and i get a tabIndex != 0 i would output compilation error.
now the problem is, whats the best way to see if the indentation got reduced, should i read \b (backspace) chars from lex and then reduce the tabIndex variable (when the user doesn't use break)?
another method to achieve this?
also just another small question, i want every executable to have its starting point on the function called start() should i hardcode this onto my yacc file?
sorry for the long question any help is greatly appreciated. also if someone can provide an yacc file for python would be nice as a guideline (tried looking on Google and had no luck).
thanks in advance.
I am currently implementing a programming language rather similar to this (including the multilevel break oddly enough). My solution was to have the tokenizer emit indent and dedent tokens based on indentation. Eg:
while 1: # colons help :)
print('foo')
break 1
becomes:
["while", "1", ":",
indent,
"print", "(", "'foo'", ")",
"break", "1",
dedent]
It makes the tokenizer's handling of '\n' somewhat complicated though. Also, i wrote the tokenizer and parser from scratch, so i'm not sure whether this is feasable in lex and yacc.
Edit:
Semi-working pseudocode example:
level = 0
levels = []
for c = getc():
if c=='\n':
emit('\n')
n = 0
while (c=getc())==' ':
n += 1
if n > level:
emit(indent)
push(levels,n)
while n < level:
emit(dedent)
level = pop(levels)
if level < n:
error tokenize
# fall through
emit(c) #lazy example
Very interesting exercise. Can't you use the end keyword to check when the scope ends?
On a different note, I have never seen a language that allows you to break out of several nested loops at once. There may be a good reason for that...

Vim, C++, look up member function

I am using vim 7.x
I am using alternate file.
I have a mapping of *.hpp <--> *.cpp
Suppose I'm in
class Foo {
void some_me#mber_func(); // # = my cursor
}
in Foo.hpp
is there a way to tell vim to do the following:
Grab word under # (easy, expand("")
Look up the class I'm inside of ("Foo") <-- I have no idea how to do this
Append `1 & 2 (easy: using ".") --> "Foo::some_member_func"
4: Switch files (easy, :A)
Do a / on 4
So basically, I can script all of this together, except the "find the name of the enclosing class I'm in part (especially if classes are nested).
I know about ctags. I know about cscope. I'm choosing to not use them -- I prefer solutions where I understand where they break.
This is relatively easy to do crudely and very difficult to do well. C and C++ are rather complex languages to parse reliably. At the risk of being downvoted, I'd personally recommend parsing the tags file generated by ctags, but if you really want to do it in Vim, there are a few of options for the "crude" method.
Make some assumptions. The assumptions you make depend on how complicated you want it to be. At the simplest level: assume you're in a class definition and there are no other nearby braces. Based on your coding style, assume that the opening brace of the class definition is on the same line as "class".
let classlineRE = '^class\s\+\(\k\+\)\s\+{.*'
let match = search(classlineRE, 'bnW')
if match != 0
let classline = getline(match)
let classname = substitute(classline, classlineRE, '\1', '')
" Now do something with classname
endif
The assumptions model can obviously be extended/generalised as much as you see fit. You can just search back for the brace and then search back for class and take what's in between (to handle braces on a separate line to "class"). You can filter out comments. If you want to be really clever, you can start looking at what level of braces you're in and make sure it's a top level one (go to the start of the file, add 1 every time you see '{' and subtract one every time you see '}' etc). Your vim script will get very very very complicated.
Another one risking the downvote, you could use one of the various C parsers written in python and use the vim-python interface to make it act like a vim script. To be honest, if you're thinking of doing this, I'd stick with ctags/cscope.
Use rainbow.vim. This does highlighting based on depth of indentation, so you could be a little clever and search back (using search('{', 'bW') or similar) for opening braces, then interrogate the syntax highlighting of those braces (using synIDattr(synID(line("."), col("."),1), "name")) and if it's hlLevel0, you know it's a top-level brace. You can then search back for class and parse as per item 1.
I hope that all of the above gives you some food for thought...