SLY (Sly Lex-Yacc) Version 0.0

Copyright (C) 2016 David M. Beazley (Dabeaz LLC) All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

• Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
• Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
• Neither the name of the David Beazley or Dabeaz LLC may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Requirements

SLY requires the use of Python 3.5 or greater. Older versions of Python are not supported.

Introduction

SLY is a 100% Python implementation of the lex and yacc tools commonly used to write parsers and compilers. Parsing is based on the same LALR(1) algorithm used by many yacc tools. Here are a few notable features:

• SLY provides very extensive error reporting and diagnostic information to assist in parser construction. The original implementation was developed for instructional purposes. As a result, the system tries to identify the most common types of errors made by novice users.

• SLY provides full support for empty productions, error recovery, precedence specifiers, and moderately ambiguous grammars.

• SLY uses various Python metaprogramming features to specify lexers and parsers. There are no generated files or extra steps involved. You simply write Python code and run it.

• SLY can be used to build parsers for "real" programming languages. Although it is not ultra-fast due to its Python implementation, SLY can be used to parse grammars consisting of several hundred rules (as might be found for a language like C).

SLY originates from the PLY project (http://www.dabeaz.com/ply/index.html). However, it's been modernized a bit. In fact, don't expect any code previously written for PLY to work. That said, most of the things that were possible in PLY are also possible in SLY.

An Example

SLY is probably best illustrated by an example. Here's what it looks like to write a parser that can evaluate simple arithmetic expressions and store variables:

# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# calc.py
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

from sly import Lexer, Parser

class CalcLexer(Lexer):
    tokens = {
        'NAME', 'NUMBER',
        }
    ignore = ' \t'
    literals = { '=', '+', '-', '*', '/', '(', ')' }

    # Tokens
    NAME = r'[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*'

    @_(r'\d+')
    def NUMBER(self, t):
        t.value = int(t.value)
        return t

    @_(r'\n+')
    def newline(self, t):
        self.lineno += t.value.count('\n')

    def error(self, value):
        print("Illegal character '%s'" % value[0])
        self.index += 1

class CalcParser(Parser):
    tokens = CalcLexer.tokens

    precedence = (
        ('left', '+', '-'),
        ('left', '*', '/'),
        ('right', 'UMINUS'),
        )

    def __init__(self):
        self.names = { }

    @_('NAME "=" expr')
    def statement(self, p):
        self.names[p.NAME] = p.expr

    @_('expr')
    def statement(self, p):
        print(p.expr)

    @_('expr "+" expr')
    def expr(self, p):
        return p.expr0 + p.expr1

    @_('expr "-" expr')
    def expr(self, p):
        return p.expr0 - p.expr1

    @_('expr "*" expr')
    def expr(self, p):
        return p.expr0 * p.expr1

    @_('expr "/" expr')
    def expr(self, p):
        return p.expr0 / p.expr1

    @_('"-" expr %prec UMINUS')
    def expr(self, p):
        return -p.expr

    @_('"(" expr ")"')
    def expr(self, p):
        return p.expr

    @_('NUMBER')
    def expr(self, p):
        return p.NUMBER

    @_('NAME')
    def expr(self, p):
        try:
            return self.names[p.NAME]
        except LookupError:
            print("Undefined name '%s'" % p.NAME)
            return 0

if __name__ == '__main__':
    lexer = CalcLexer()
    parser = CalcParser()
    while True:
        try:
            text = input('calc > ')
        except EOFError:
            break
        if text:
            parser.parse(lexer.tokenize(text))

Documentation

Further documentation can be found in the docs directory.

Resources

For a detailed overview of parsing theory, consult the excellent book "Compilers : Principles, Techniques, and Tools" by Aho, Sethi, and Ullman. The topics found in "Lex & Yacc" by Levine, Mason, and Brown may also be useful.

The GitHub page for SLY can be found at:

 https://github.com/dabeaz/sly

Please direct bug reports and pull requests to the GitHub page. To contact me directly, send email to dave@dabeaz.com or contact me on Twitter (@dabeaz).

-- Dave