ANTLR: removing clutter - antlr

i'm learning ANTLR right now. Let's say, I have a VHDL code and would like to do some processing on the PROCESS blocks. The rest should be completely ignored. I don't want to describe the whole VHDL language, since I'm interested only in the process blocks. So I could write a rule that matches process blocks. But how do I tell ANTLR to match only the process block rule and ignore anything else?

I know next to no VHDL, so let's say you want to replace all single line comments in a (Java) source file with multi-line comments:
//foo
should become:
/* foo */
You need to let the lexer match single line comments, of course. But you should also make sure it recognizes multi-line comments because you don't want //bar to be recognized as a single line comment in:
/*
//bar
*/
The same goes for string literals:
String s = "no // comment";
Finally, you should create some sort of catch-all rule in the lexer that will match any character.
A quick demo:
grammar T;
parse
: (t=. {System.out.print($t.text);})* EOF
;
Str
: '"' ('\\' . | ~('\\' | '"'))* '"'
;
MLComment
: '/*' .* '*/'
;
SLComment
: '//' ~('\r' | '\n')*
{
setText("/* " + getText().substring(2) + " */");
}
;
Any
: . // fall through rule, matches any character
;
If you now parse input like this:
//comment 1
class Foo {
//comment 2
/*
* not // a comment
*/
String s = "not // a // comment"; //comment 3
}
the following will be printed to your console:
/* comment 1 */
class Foo {
/* comment 2 */
/*
* not // a comment
*/
String s = "not // a // comment"; /* comment 3 */
}
Note that this is just a quick demo: a string literal in Java could contain Unicode escapes, which my demo doesn't support, and my demo also does not handle char-literals (the char literal char c = '"'; would break it). All of these things are quite easy to fix, of course.

In the upcoming ANTLR v4, you can do fuzzy parsing. take a look at
http://www.antlr.org/wiki/display/ANTLR4/Wildcard+Operator+and+Nongreedy+Subrules
You can get the beta software here:
http://antlr.org/download/antlr-4.0b3-complete.jar
Terence

Related

No way to implement a q quoted string with custom delimiters in Antlr4

I'm trying to implement a lexer rule for an oracle Q quoted string mechanism where we have something like q'$some string$'
Here you can have any character in place of $ other than whitespace, (, {, [, <, but the string must start and end with the same character. Some examples of accepted tokens would be:
q'!some string!'
q'ssome strings'
Notice how s is the custom delimiter but it is fine to have that in the string as well because we would only end at s'
Here's how I was trying to implement the rule:
Q_QUOTED_LITERAL: Q_QUOTED_LITERAL_NON_TERMINATED . QUOTE-> type(QUOTED_LITERAL);
Q_QUOTED_LITERAL_NON_TERMINATED:
Q QUOTE ~[ ({[<'"\t\n\r] { setDelimChar( (char)_input.LA(-1) ); }
( . { !isValidEndDelimChar() }? )*
;
I have already checked the value I get from !isValidEndDelimChar() and I'm getting a false predicate here at the right place so everything should work, but antlr simply ignores this predicate. I've also tried moving the predicate around, putting that part in a separate rule, and a bunch of other stuff, after a day and a half of research on the same I'm finally raising this issue.
I have also tried to implement it in other ways but there doesn't seem to be a way to implement a custom char delimited string in antlr4 (The antlr3 version used to work).
Not sure why the { ... } action isn't invoked, but it's not needed. The following grammar worked for me (put the predicate in front of the .!):
grammar Test;
#lexer::members {
boolean isValidEndDelimChar() {
return (_input.LA(1) == getText().charAt(2)) && (_input.LA(2) == '\'');
}
}
parse
: .*? EOF
;
Q_QUOTED_LITERAL
: 'q\'' ~[ ({[<'"\t\n\r] ( {!isValidEndDelimChar()}? . )* . '\''
;
SPACE
: [ \t\f\r\n] -> skip
;
If you run the class:
import org.antlr.v4.runtime.*;
public class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Lexer lexer = new TestLexer(CharStreams.fromString("q'ssome strings' q'!foo!'"));
CommonTokenStream tokens = new CommonTokenStream(lexer);
tokens.fill();
for (Token t : tokens.getTokens()) {
System.out.printf("%-20s %s\n", TestLexer.VOCABULARY.getSymbolicName(t.getType()), t.getText());
}
}
}
the following output will be printed:
Q_QUOTED_LITERAL q'ssome strings'
Q_QUOTED_LITERAL q'!foo!'
EOF <EOF>

Yacc/bison: what's wrong with my syntax equations?

I'm writing a "compiler" of sorts: it reads a description of a game (with rooms, characters, things, etc.) Think of it as a visual version of an Adventure-style game, but with much simpler problems.
When I run my "compiler" I'm getting a syntax error on my input, and I can't figure out why. Here's the relevant section of my yacc input:
character
: char-head general-text character-insides { PopChoices(); }
;
character-insides
: LEFTBRACKET options RIGHTBRACKET
;
char-head
: char-namesWT opt-imgsWT char-desc opt-cond
;
char-desc
: general-text { SetText($1); }
;
char-namesWT
: DOTC ID WORD { AddCharacter($3, $2); expect(EXP_TEXT); }
;
opt-cond
: %empty
| condition
;
condition
: condition-reason condition-main general-text
{ AddCondition($1, $2, $3); }
;
condition-reason
: DOTU { $$ = 'u'; }
| DOTV { $$ = 'v'; }
;
condition-main
: money-conditionWT
| have-conditionWT
| moves-conditionWT
| flag-conditionWT
;
have-conditionWT
: PERCENT_SLASH opt-bang ID
{ $$ = MkCondID($1, $2, $3) ; expect(EXP_TEXT); }
;
opt-bang
: %empty { $$ = TRUE; }
| BANG { $$ = FALSE; }
;
ID: WORD
;
Things in all caps are terminal symbols, things in lower or mixed case are non-terminals. If a non-terminal ends in WT, then it "wants text". That is, it expects that what comes after it may be arbitrary text.
Background: I have written my own token recognizer in C++ because(*) I want the syntax to be able to change the way the lexer's behavior. Two types of tokens should be matched only when the syntax expects them: FILENAME (with slashes and other non-alphameric characters) and TEXT, which means "all the text from here to the end of the line" (but not starting with certain keywords).
The function "expect" tells the lexer when to look for these two symbols. The expectation is reset to EXP_NORMAL after each token is returned.
I have added code to yylex that prints out the tokens as it recognizes them, and it looks to me like the tokenizer is working properly -- returning the tokens I expect.
(*) Also because I want to be able to ask the tokenizer for the column where the error occurred, and get the contents of the line being scanned at the time so I can print out a more useful error message.
Here is the relevant part of the input:
.c Wendy wendy
OK, now you caught me, what do you want to do with me?
.u %/lasso You won't catch me like that.
[
Here is the last part of the debugging output from yylex:
token: 262: DOTC/
token: 289: WORD/Wendy
token: 289: WORD/wendy
token: 292: TEXT/OK, now you caught me, what do you want to do with me?
token: 286: DOTU/
token: 274: PERCENT_SLASH/%/
token: 289: WORD/lasso
token: 292: TEXT/You won't catch me like that.
token: 269: LEFTBRACKET/
here's my error message:
: line 124, columns 3-4: syntax error, unexpected LEFTBRACKET, expecting TEXT
[
To help you understand the equations above, here is the relevant part of the description of the input syntax that I wrote the yacc code from.
// Character:
// .c id charactername,[imagename,[animationname]]
// description-text
// .u condition on the character being usable [optional]
// .v condition on the character being visible [optional]
// [
// (options)
// ]
// Conditions:
// %$[-]n Must [not] have at least n dollars
// %/[-]name Must [not] have named thing
// %t-nnn At/before specified number of moves
// %t+nnn At/after specified number of moves
// %#[-]name named flag must [not] be set
// Condition-char: $, /, t, or #, as described above
//
// Condition:
// % condition-char (identifier/int) ['/' text-if-fail ]
// description-text: Can be either on-line text or multi-line text
// On-line text is the rest of the line
brackets mark optional non-terminals, but a bracket standing alone (represented by LEFTBRACKET and RIGHTBRACKET in the yacc) is an actual token, e.g.
// [
// (options)
// ]
above.
What am I doing wrong?
To debug parsing problems in your grammar, you need to understand the shift/reduce machine that yacc/bison produces (described in the .output file produced with the -v option), and you need to look at the trail of states that the parser goes through to reach the problem you see.
To enable debugging code in the parser (which can print the states and the shift and reduce actions as they occur), you need to compile with -DYYDEBUG or put #define YYDEBUG 1 in the top of your grammar file. The debugging code is controlled by the global variable yydebug -- set to non-zero to turn on the trace and zero to turn it off. I often use the following in main:
#ifdef YYDEBUG
extern int yydebug;
if (char *p = getenv("YYDEBUG"))
yydebug = atoi(p);
#endif
Then you can include -DYYDEBUG in your compiler flags for debug builds and turn on the debugging code by something like setenv YYDEBUG 1 to set the envvar prior to running your program.
I suppose your syntax error message was generated by bison. What is striking is that it claims to have found a LEFTBRACKET when it expects a [. Naively, you might expect it to be satisfied with the LEFTBRACKET it found, but of course bison knows nothing about LEFTBRACKET except its numeric value, which will be some integer larger than 256.
The only reason bison might expect [ is if your grammar includes the terminal '['. But since your scanner seems to return LEFTBRACKET when it sees a [, the parser will never see '['.

How would I declare a grammar rule for a number of tags in any order?

I am trying to write a compiler for a formating language.This language has a start and an end property and a set of document and text properties.
The first is just info for the document itself where as the second is the actual document (titles, paragraphs, lists... the usual). The first set must always follow the start property and must contain all properties BUT in any order the user might like.
Assuming that my tokens for the properites are PROP1, PROP2, PROP3 and PROP4 I can use recursion and an OR for all the properties so that the user can define any document property he wants.
doc_properties
: /* empty */
: doc_properties property
;
property
: PROP1
: PROP2
: PROP3
: PROP4
;
BUT how do I make him to define them all and only once. One way that I thought (the easy and crude way I would like to avoid) is because I only have 4 document properties I can just make an or of all possible combinations. I am pretty sure there is another way. Any help?
My grammar so far is pretty simple and small
%{ /* C Stuff */ %}
/* union and error stuff and tokens */
%%
source
: /* empty */
| entry_point doc_properties txt_properties exit_point
;
entry_point
: SLASH BLOCK_S LBRACE DOC RBRACE
;
doc_properties
: /* This is where my question goes */
;
txt_properties
: /* empty */
;
exit_point
: SLASH BLOCK_E LBRACE DOC RBRACE
;
%%
int main (int argc, char* argv[])
{
/* various checks for the arguments and the input output files */
yyin = fopen(argv[1], "r");
yyout = fopen(fn, "w");
//do{
yyparse();
//}while(!feof(yyin));
fclose(yyin);
fclose(yyout);
return 0;
}
void yyerror(const char* str) {
fprintf(stderr,"syntax error[%d]: %s\n",yylineno, str);
}
Also on an unrelated note does using yyparse() inside a do-while loop or just once by itself has any difference? Because I see it both ways and while the do-while loop makes more sense to me (because it requests a token parses and then again) I am not sure if the function repeats itself or something...
There is a number of syntax rules that are best enforced by semantic checks rather than by the grammar itself. For instance, in C like languages, the break construct can only appear inside loops (and switch), yet it is far simpler to accept it like any regular statement, and later, in the semantic analysis pass, reject invalid uses to break.
You could use a similar pattern: accept any combination of PROP, and later reject those that do not respect your constraints. Of course, you can also do this while parsing, using YYERROR to raise an error when appropriate.
Wrt to your second question, yyparse is to be called only once, but then of course it is in charge of calling the scanner (yylex) repeatedly. Note that Bison offers "push-parsers", where you are in charge of calling yylex repeatedly, and pass its results to yyparse (repeatedly too). See http://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/bison.html#Push-Decl for more details.

variable not passed to predicate method in ANTLR

The java code generated from ANTLR is one rule, one method in most times. But for the following rule:
switchBlockLabels[ITdcsEntity _entity,TdcsMethod _method,List<IStmt> _preStmts]
: ^(SWITCH_BLOCK_LABEL_LIST switchCaseLabel[_entity, _method, _preStmts]* switchDefaultLabel? switchCaseLabel*)
;
it generates a submethod named synpred125_TreeParserStage3_fragment(), in which mehod switchCaseLabel(_entity, _method, _preStmts) is called:
synpred125_TreeParserStage3_fragment(){
......
switchCaseLabel(_entity, _method, _preStmts);//variable not found error
......
}
switchBlockLabels(ITdcsEntity _entity,TdcsMethod _method,List<IStmt> _preStmts){
......
synpred125_TreeParserStage3_fragment();
......
}
The problem is switchCaseLabel has parameters and the parameters come from the parameters of switchBlockLabels() method, so "variable not found error" occurs.
How can I solve this problem?
My guess is that you've enabled global backtracking in your grammar like this:
options {
backtrack=true;
}
in which case you can't pass parameters to ambiguous rules. In order to communicate between ambiguous rules when you have enabled global backtracking, you must use rule scopes. The "predicate-methods" do have access to rule scopes variables.
A demo
Let's say we have this ambiguous grammar:
grammar Scope;
options {
backtrack=true;
}
parse
: atom+ EOF
;
atom
: numberOrName+
;
numberOrName
: Number
| Name
;
Number : '0'..'9'+;
Name : ('a'..'z' | 'A'..'Z')+;
Space : ' ' {skip();};
(for the record, the atom+ and numberOrName+ make it ambiguous)
If you now want to pass information between the parse and numberOrName rule, say an integer n, something like this will fail (which is the way you tried it):
grammar Scope;
options {
backtrack=true;
}
parse
#init{int n = 0;}
: (atom[++n])+ EOF
;
atom[int n]
: (numberOrName[n])+
;
numberOrName[int n]
: Number {System.out.println(n + " = " + $Number.text);}
| Name {System.out.println(n + " = " + $Name.text);}
;
Number : '0'..'9'+;
Name : ('a'..'z' | 'A'..'Z')+;
Space : ' ' {skip();};
In order to do this using rule scopes, you could do it like this:
grammar Scope;
options {
backtrack=true;
}
parse
scope{int n; /* define the scoped variable */ }
#init{$parse::n = 0; /* important: initialize the variable! */ }
: atom+ EOF
;
atom
: numberOrName+
;
numberOrName /* increment and print the scoped variable from the parse rule */
: Number {System.out.println(++$parse::n + " = " + $Number.text);}
| Name {System.out.println(++$parse::n + " = " + $Name.text);}
;
Number : '0'..'9'+;
Name : ('a'..'z' | 'A'..'Z')+;
Space : ' ' {skip();};
Test
If you now run the following class:
import org.antlr.runtime.*;
public class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
String src = "foo 42 Bar 666";
ScopeLexer lexer = new ScopeLexer(new ANTLRStringStream(src));
ScopeParser parser = new ScopeParser(new CommonTokenStream(lexer));
parser.parse();
}
}
you will see the following being printed to the console:
1 = foo
2 = 42
3 = Bar
4 = 666
P.S.
I don't know what language you're parsing, but enabling global backtracking is usually overkill and can have quite an impact on the performance of your parser. Computer languages often are ambiguous in just a few cases. Instead of enabling global backtracking, you really should look into adding syntactic predicates, or enabling backtracking on those rules that are ambiguous. See The Definitive ANTLR Reference for more info.

Antlr backtrack option not working

I am not sure but I think the Antlr backtrack option is not working properly or something...
Here is my grammar:
grammar Test;
options {
backtrack=true;
memoize=true;
}
prog: (code)+;
code
: ABC {System.out.println("ABC");}
| OTHER {System.out.println("OTHER");}
;
ABC : 'ABC';
OTHER : .;
If the input stream is "ABC" then I'll see ABC printed.
If the input stream is "ACD" then I'll see 3 times OTHER printed.
But if the input stream is "ABD" then I'll see
line 1:2 mismatched character 'D' expecting 'C'
line 1:3 required (...)+ loop did not match anything at input ''
but I expect to see three times OTHER, since the input should match the second rule if the first rule fails.
That doesn't make any sense. Why the parser didn't backtrack when it sees that the last character was not 'C'? However, it was ok with "ACD."
Could someone please help me solve this issue???
Thanks for your time!!!
The option backtrack=true applies to parser rules only, not lexer rules.
EDIT
The only work-around I am aware of, is by letting "AB" followed by some other char other than "C" be matched in the same ABC rule and then manually emitting other tokens.
A demo:
grammar Test;
#lexer::members {
List<Token> tokens = new ArrayList<Token>();
public void emit(int type, String text) {
state.token = new CommonToken(type, text);
tokens.add(state.token);
}
public Token nextToken() {
super.nextToken();
if(tokens.size() == 0) {
return Token.EOF_TOKEN;
}
return tokens.remove(0);
}
}
prog
: code+
;
code
: ABC {System.out.println("ABC");}
| OTHER {System.out.println("OTHER");}
;
ABC
: 'ABC'
| 'AB' t=~'C'
{
emit(OTHER, "A");
emit(OTHER, "B");
emit(OTHER, String.valueOf((char)$t));
}
;
OTHER
: .
;
Another solution. this might be a simpler solution though. i made use of "syntactic predicates".
grammar ABC;
#lexer::header {package org.inanme.antlr;}
#parser::header {package org.inanme.antlr;}
prog: (code)+ EOF;
code: ABC {System.out.println($ABC.text);}
| OTHER {System.out.println($OTHER.text);};
ABC : ('ABC') => 'ABC' | 'A';
OTHER : .;