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Parser-Combinators-0.05
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/ Parser::Combinators

NAME

Parser::Combinators - A library of building blocks for parsing text

SYNOPSIS

  use Parser::Combinators;

  my $parser = < a combination of the parser building blocks from Parser::Combinators >
  (my $status, my $rest, my $matches) = $parser->($str);
  my $parse_tree = getParseTree($matches);

DESCRIPTION

Parser::Combinators is a library of parser building blocks ('parser combinators'), inspired by the Parsec parser combinator library in Haskell (http://legacy.cs.uu.nl/daan/download/parsec/parsec.html). The idea is that you build a parsers not by specifying a grammar (as in yacc/lex or Parse::RecDescent), but by combining a set of small parsers that parse well-defined items.

Usage

Each parser in this library , e.g. word or symbol, is a function that returns a function (actually, a closure) that parses a string. You can combine these parsers by using special parsers like sequence and choice. For example, a JavaScript variable declaration

     var res = 42;

could be parsed as:

    my $p =
        sequence [
            symbol('var'),
            word,
            symbol('='),
            natural,
            semi
        ]

if you want to express that the assignment is optional, i.e. var res; is also valid, you can use maybe():

    my $p =
        sequence [
            symbol('var'),
            word,
            maybe(
                sequence [
                   symbol('='),
                   natural
                   ]
            ),
            semi
        ]

If you want to parse alternatives you can use choice(). For example, to express that either of the next two lines are valid:

    42
    return(42)

you can write

    my $p = choice( number, sequence [ symbol('return'), parens( number ) ] )

This example also illustrates the `parens()` parser to parse anything enclosed in parenthesis

Provided Parsers

The library is not complete in the sense that not all Parsec combinators have been implemented. Currently, it contains:

        whiteSpace : parses any white space, always returns success. 

        * Lexeme parsers (they remove trailing whitespace):

        word : (\w+)
        natural : (\d+)
        symbol : parses a given symbol, e.g. symbol('int')
                comma : parses a comma
        semi : parses a semicolon
        
        char : parses a given character

        * Combinators:

        sequence( [ $parser1, $parser2, ... ], $optional_sub_ref )
        choice( $parser1, $parser2, ...) : tries the specified parsers in order
        try : normally, the parser consums matching input. try() stops a parser from consuming the string
        maybe : is like try() but always reports success
        parens( $parser ) : parser '(', then applies $parser, then ')'
        many( $parser) : applies $parser zero or more times
        many1( $parser) : applies $parser one or more times
        sepBy( $separator, $parser) : parses a list of $parser separated by $separator
        oneOf( [$patt1, $patt2,...]): like symbol() but parses the patterns in order

        * Dangerous: the following parsers take a regular expression, so you can mix regexes and other combinators ...                                       

        upto( $patt )
        greedyUpto( $patt)
        regex( $patt)

Labeling

You can label any parser in a sequence using an anonymous hash, for example:

    sub type_parser {   
                sequence [
        {Type =>        word},
        maybe parens choice(
                {Kind => natural},
                                                sequence [
                                                        symbol('kind'),
                                                        symbol('='),
                            {Kind => natural}
                                                ] 
                                        )        
                ] 
    }

Applying this parser returns a tuple as follows:

  my $str = 'integer(kind=8), '
  (my $status, my $rest, my $matches) = type_parser($str);

Here,$status is 0 if the match failed, 1 if it succeeded. $rest contains the rest of the string. The actual matches are stored in the array $matches. As every parser returns its resuls as an array ref, $matches contains the concrete parsed syntax, i.e. a nested array of arrays of strings.

    show($matches) ==> [{'Type' => 'integer'},['kind','\\=',{'Kind' => '8'}]]

You can remove the unlabeled matches and convert the raw tree into nested hashes using getParseTree:

  my $parse_tree = getParseTree($matches);

    show($parse_tree) ==> {'Type' => 'integer','Kind' => '8'}

A more complete example

I wrote this library because I needed to parse argument declarations of Fortran-95 code. Some examples of valid declarations are:

      integer(kind=8), dimension(0:ip, -1:jp+1, kp) , intent( In ) :: u, v,w
      real, dimension(0:7) :: f 
      real(8), dimension(0:7,kp) :: f,g

I want to extract the type and kind, the dimension and the list of variable names. For completeness I'm parsing the `intent` attribute as well. The parser is a sequence of four separate parsers type_parser, dim_parser, intent_parser and arglist_parser. All the optional fields are wrapped in a maybe().

    my $F95_arg_decl_parser =    
    sequence [
        whiteSpace,
        {TypeTup => &type_parser},
            maybe(
                    sequence [
                            comma,
                &dim_parser
                ], 
        ),
            maybe(
                sequence [
                        comma,
                        &intent_parser
                ], 
            ),
        &arglist_parser
        ];

    # where

    sub type_parser {   
                sequence [
        {Type =>        word},
        maybe parens choice(
                {Kind => natural},
                                                sequence [
                                                        symbol('kind'),
                                                        symbol('='),
                            {Kind => natural}
                                                ] 
                                        )        
                ] 
    }

    sub dim_parser {
                sequence [
                        symbol('dimension'),
        {Dim => parens sepBy(',', regex('[^,\)]+')) }
                ] 
    }

    sub intent_parser {
            sequence [
            symbol('intent'),
         {Intent => parens word}
                ] 
    }

    sub arglist_parser {
        sequence [
                symbol('::'),
            {Vars => sepBy(',',&word)}
        ]
    }

Running the parser and calling getParseTree() on the first string results in

    {
    'TypeTup' => {
                'Type' => 'integer',
                'Kind' => '8'
            },
    'Dim' => ['0:ip','-1:jp+1','kp'],
    'Intent' => 'In',
    'Vars' => ['u','v','w']
    }

See the test fortran95_argument_declarations.t for the source code.

No Monads?!

As this library is inspired by a monadic parser combinator library from Haskell, I have also implemented bindP() and returnP() for those who like monads ^_^ So instead of saying

    my $pp = sequence [ $p1, $p2, $p3 ]

you can say

    my $pp = bindP( 
        $p1, 
        sub { (my $x) =@_;
            bindP( 
                $p2,  
                sub {(my $y) =@_;
                bindP(
                    $p3,
                    sub { (my $z) = @_;
                        returnP->($z);
                        }
                    )->($y)
                }
                )->($x);
            }
        );

which is obviously so much better :-)

AUTHOR

Wim Vanderbauwhede <Wim.Vanderbauwhede@gmail.com>

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2013- Wim Vanderbauwhede

LICENSE

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

SEE ALSO

- The original Parsec library: http://legacy.cs.uu.nl/daan/download/parsec/parsec.html and http://hackage.haskell.org/package/parsec