Single quoted literal value fails Antlr lexer - antlr

I have a lexer rule that defines single-quoted literal string as
L_S_STRING : '\'' (('\'' '\'') | ('\\' '\'') | ~('\''))* '\''
It fails one particular case:
'yyyy-MM-dd\\'T\\'HH:mm:ss\\'Z\\''
The problem is really with the last two single quotes. If I added a space in between, it worked. Or I could use two single quotes to end and it worked too, e.g.
'yyyy-MM-dd\\'T\\'HH:mm:ss\\'Z'''
I am not sure if it has something to do with having a non-greedy operator which caused the first-match of ('\'' '\'')? If so, I don't see how the last version could have worked.
In any event, could someone help please?
UPDATE - I am not able to reproduce it outside of the full grammar. This may be a red herring.
UPDATE - I missed some important context so I posted another question here Antlr4: single quote rule fails when there are escape chars plus carriage return, new line

I can't reproduce that. Given the following grammar:
lexer grammar Test;
L_S_STRING : '\'' (('\'' '\'') | ('\\' '\'') | ~('\''))* '\'';
OTHER : . ;
which can be tested as follows:
String source = "A'yyyy-MM-dd\\\\'T\\\\'HH:mm:ss\\\\'Z\\\\''B";
Test lexer = new Test(CharStreams.fromString(source));
CommonTokenStream tokens = new CommonTokenStream(lexer);
tokens.fill();
for (Token t : tokens.getTokens()) {
System.out.printf("%-15s %s\n", Test.VOCABULARY.getSymbolicName(t.getType()), t.getText());
}
will print:
OTHER A
L_S_STRING 'yyyy-MM-dd\\'T\\'HH:mm:ss\\'Z\\''
OTHER B
EOF <EOF>

Related

What is the ANTLR4 equivalent of a ! in a lexer rule?

I'm working on converting an old ANTLR 2 grammar to ANTLR 4, and I'm having trouble with the string rule.
STRING :
'\''!
(
~('\'' | '\\' | '\r' | '\n')
)*
'\''!
;
This creates a STRING token whose text contains the contents of the string, but does not contain the starting and ending quotes, because of the ! symbol after the quote literals.
ANTLR 4 chokes on the ! symbol, ('!' came as a complete surprise to me (AC0050)) but if I leave it off, I end up with tokens that contain the quotes, which is not what I want. What's the correct way to port this to ANTLR 4?
Antlr4 generally treats tokens as being immutable, at least in the sense that there is no support for a language neutral equivalent of !.
Perhaps the simplest way to accomplish the equivalent is:
string : str=STRING { Strings.unquote($str); } ;
STRING : SQuote ~[\r\n\\']* SQuote ;
fragment SQuote : '\'' ;
where Strings.unquote is:
public static void unquote(Token token) {
CommonToken ct = (CommonToken) token;
String text = ct.getText();
text = .... unquote it ....
ct.setText(text);
}
The reason for using a parser rule is because attribute references are not (currently) supported in the lexer. Still, it could be done on the lexer rule - just would require a slight bit more effort to dig to the token.
An alternative to modifying the token text is to implement a custom token with custom fields and methods. See this answer if of interest.
I believe in ANTLR4 your problem can be solved using lexical modes and lexer commands.
Here is an example from there that I think does exactly what you need (although for double quotes but it's an easy fix):
lexer grammar Strings;
LQUOTE : '"' -> more, mode(STR) ;
WS : [ \r\t\n]+ -> skip ;
mode STR;
STRING : '"' -> mode(DEFAULT_MODE) ; // token we want parser to see
TEXT : . -> more ; // collect more text for string

ANTLR String LEXER token

I am trying to do a STRING lexer token. My problem is that besides \n, \r, \t
any character is himself (for example \c is c). That being said i have the following example:
"This is a valid \
string."
"This is
not valid."
"This is al\so a valid string"
After searching on the internet to no avail for me, i concluded that i must use an #after clause. Unfortunately i don't understand how to do this. If i am not mistaking i can't use a syntactic predicate because this is not a parser rule, it's a lexer rule.
How about something like this:
STRING
: '"' ( '\\' ('\\'|'\t'|'\r\n'|'\r'|'\n'|'"') | ~('\\'|'\t'|'\r'|'\n'|'"') )* '"'
;
where '\\' ('\\'|'\t'|'\r\n'|'\r'|'\n'|'"') is an escaped slash, tab, line break or quote. And ~('\\'|'\t'|'\r'|'\n'|'"') matches any char other than a slash, tab, line break or quote.

antlr4 multiline string parsing

If I have a ONELINE_STRING fragment rule in an antlr4 lexer that identifies a simple quoted string on one line, how can I create a more general STRING rule in the lexer that will concatenate adjacent ONELINE_STRING's (ie, separated only by whitespace and/or comments) as long as they each start on a different line?
ie,
"foo" "bar"
would be parsed as two STRING tokens, "foo" followed by "bar"
while:
"foo"
"bar"
would be seen as one STRING token: "foobar"
For clarification: The idea is that while I generally want the parser to be able to recognize adjacent strings as separate, and whitespace and comments to be ignored by the parser, I want to use the idea that if the last non-whitespace sub-token on a line was a string, and the first sub-token on the next line that is not all whitespace is also a string, then the separate strings should be concatenated into one long string as a means of specifying potentially very long strings without having to put the whole thing on one line. This is very straightforward if I were wanting all adjacent string sub-tokens to be concatenated, as they are in C... but for my purposes, I only want concatenation to occur when the string sub-tokens start on different lines. This concatenation should be invisible to any rule in the parser that might use a string. This is why I was thinking it might be better to situate the rule inside the lexer instead of the parser, but I'm not wholly opposed to doing this in the parser, and all the parsing rules which might have referred to a STRING token would instead refer to the parser string rule whenever they want a string.
Sample1:
"desc" "this sample will parse as two strings.
Sample3 (note, 'output' is a keyword in the language):
output "this is a very long line that I've explicitly made so that it does not "
"easily fit on just one line, so it gets split up into separate ones for "
"ease of reading, but the parser should see it all as one long string. "
"This example will parse as if the output command had been followed by "
"only a single string, even though it is composed of multiple string "
"fragments, all of which should be invisible to the parser.%n";
Both of these examples should be accepted as valid by the parser. The former is an example of a declaration, while the latter is an example of an imperative statement in the language.
Addendum:
I had originally been thinking that this would need to be done in the lexer because although newlines are supposed to be ignored by the parser, like all other whitespace, a multiline string is actually sensitive to the presence of newlines I did not think that the parser could perceive that.
However, I have been thinking that it may be possible to have the ONELINE_STRING as a lexer rule, and have a general 'string' parser rule which detects adjacent ONELINE_STRINGS, using a predicate between strings to detect if the next ONELINE_STRING token is starting on a different line than the previous one, and if so, it should invisibly concatenate them so that its text is indistinguishable from a string that had been specified all on one line. I am unsure of the logistics of how this would be implemented, however.
Okay, I have it.
I need to have the string recognizer in the parser, as some of you have suggested. The trick is to use lexer modes in the lexer.
So in the Lexer file I have this:
BEGIN_STRING : '"' -> pushMode(StringMode);
mode StringMode;
END_STRING: '"'-> popMode;
STRING_LITERAL_TEXT : ~[\r\n%"];
STRING_LITERAL_ESCAPE_QUOTE : '%"' { setText("\""); };
STRING_LITERAL_ESCAPE_PERCENT: '%%' { setText("%"); };
STRING_LITERAL_ESCAPE_NEWLINE : '%n'{ setText("\n"); };
UNTERMINATED_STRING: { _input.LA(1) == '\n' || _input.LA(1) == '\r' || _input.LA(1) == EOF}? -> popMode;
And in the parser file I have this:
string returns [String text] locals [int line] : a=stringLiteral { $line = $a.line; $text=$a.text;}
({_input.LT(1)!=null && _input.LT(1).getLine()>$line}?
a=stringLiteral { $line = $a.line; $text+=$a.text; })*
;
stringLiteral returns [int line, String text]: BEGIN_STRING {$text = "";}
(a=(STRING_LITERAL_TEXT
| STRING_LITERAL_ESCAPE_NEWLINE
| STRING_LITERAL_ESCAPE_QUOTE
| STRING_LITERAL_ESCAPE_PERCENT
) {$text+=$a.text;} )*
stringEnd { $line = $BEGIN_STRING.line; }
;
stringEnd: END_STRING #string_finish
| UNTERMINATED_STRING #string_hang
;
The string rule thus concatenates adjacent string literals as long as they are on different lines. The stringEnd rule needs an event handler for when a string literal is not terminated correctly so that the parser can report a syntax error, but the string is otherwise treated as if it had been closed correctly.
EDIT: Sorry, have not read your requirements fully. The following approach would match both examples not only the desired one. Have to think about it...
The simplest way would be to do this in the parser. And I see no point that would require this to be done in the lexer.
multiString : singleString +;
singleString : ONELINE_STRING;
ONELINE_STRING: ...; // no fragment!
WS : ... -> skip;
Comment : ... -> skip;
As already mentioned, the (IMO) better way would be to handle this inside the parser. But here's a way to handle it in the lexer:
STRING
: SINGLE_STRING ( LINE_CONTINUATION SINGLE_STRING )*
;
HIDDEN
: ( SPACE | LINE_BREAK | COMMENT ) -> channel(HIDDEN)
;
fragment SINGLE_STRING
: '"' ~'"'* '"'
;
fragment LINE_CONTINUATION
: ( SPACE | COMMENT )* LINE_BREAK ( SPACE | COMMENT )*
;
fragment SPACE
: [ \t]
;
fragment LINE_BREAK
: [\r\n]
| '\r\n'
;
fragment COMMENT
: '//' ~[\r\n]+
;
Tokenizing the input:
"a" "b"
"c"
"d"
"e"
"f"
would create the following 5 tokens:
"a"
"b"
"c"\n"d"
"e"
"f"
However, if the token would include a comment:
"c" // comment
"d"
then you'd need to strip this "// comment" from the token yourself at a later stage. The lexer will not be able to put this substring on a different channel, or skip it.

How can I make lexer backtrack based on predicate in Antlr 3 (or 4)?

I have the following (simplified) problem in Antlr3.
I have a set of lexer rules for a grammar with special strings and regular strings. Both are single-quoted. Special strings conform to a pattern (for example, suppose they only contain letters). There's also a function that determines if a matched a string is special. Whitespace is ignored.
Now suppose for example that isSpecial returns true only for string "foo". If I'm looking at "'foo' 'bar' '123'", the lexer should produce 1 special string token for foo, and then 2 regular string tokens.
I am trying to do something like this:
SpecialLiteral : { isSpecial(getText()) }?=> '\'' (Letter)+ '\'' ;
StringLiteral : '\'' ( ~('\') )* '\'' ;
This doesn't work as getText() is not yet populated in gating predicate, so empty string is passed to isSpecial, and "'foo'" becomes StringLiteral.
If I change gating predicate to validating predicate, I have the correct getText in isSpecial, but when it returns false (for "'bar'", for example), lexer doesn't backtrack and make "'bar'" a StringLiteral, it just fails.
Is it possible to solve this problem? If I were to just edit the lexer manually, it seems like it should be doable. We know the position before mSpecialLiteral, so we can just go back there and then act like we do after gating predicate.
How to do it using the grammar/what is to be passed to isSpecial?
You could match both in the same rule, and then check after the literal has matched which type it is, and change the type to SpecialLiteral when isSpecial(getText()) is true:
grammar T;
...
tokens {
SpecialLiteral;
}
...
StringLiteral
: '\'' ( ~( '\'' ) )* '\''
{
if(isSpecial(getText())) {
$type = SpecialLiteral;
}
}
;

Parsing Newlines, EOF as End-of-Statement Marker with ANTLR3

My question is in regards to running the following grammar in ANTLRWorks:
INT :('0'..'9')+;
SEMICOLON: ';';
NEWLINE: ('\r\n'|'\n'|'\r');
STMTEND: (SEMICOLON (NEWLINE)*|NEWLINE+);
statement
: STMTEND
| INT STMTEND
;
program: statement+;
I get the following results with the following input (with program as the start rule), regardless of which newline NL (CR/LF/CRLF) or integer I choose:
"; NL" or "32; NL" parses without error.
";" or "45;" (without newlines) result in EarlyExitException.
"NL" by itself parses without error.
"456 NL", without the semicolon, results in MismatchedTokenException.
What I want is for a statement to be terminated by a newline, semicolon, or semicolon followed by newline, and I want the parser to eat as many contiguous newlines as it can on a termination, so "; NL NL NL NL" is just one termination, not four or five. Also, I would like the end-of-file case to be a valid termination as well, but I don't know how to do that yet.
So what's wrong with this, and how can I make this terminate nicely at EOF? I'm completely new to all of parsing, ANTLR, and EBNF, and I haven't found much material to read on it at a level somewhere in between the simple calculator example and the reference (I have The Definitive ANTLR Reference, but it really is a reference, with a quick start in the front which I haven't yet got to run outside of ANTLRWorks), so any reading suggestions (besides Wirth's 1977 ACM paper) would be helpful too. Thanks!
In case of input like ";" or "45;", the token STMTEND will never be created.
";" will create a single token: SEMICOLON, and "45;" will produce: INT SEMICOLON.
What you (probably) want is that SEMICOLON and NEWLINE never make it to real tokens themselves, but they will always be a STMTEND. You can do that by making them so called "fragment" rules:
program: statement+;
statement
: STMTEND
| INT STMTEND
;
INT : '0'..'9'+;
STMTEND : SEMICOLON NEWLINE* | NEWLINE+;
fragment SEMICOLON : ';';
fragment NEWLINE : '\r' '\n' | '\n' | '\r';
Fragment rules are only available for other lexer rules, so they will never end up in parser (production) rules. To emphasize: the grammar above will only ever create either INT or STMTEND tokens.