How Parsers and Compilers Work

How parsers and compilers work
1/13/15, 5:10 AM
Notes on How Parsers and Compilers Work

Contact the author: Stephen Ferg
Content updated: 2007-10-15
Page format updated: 2011-10-14
Download this zip file to obtain the source code of files discussed in this article.
Table of Contents
1 About this document
1.1 What I want...
1.2 I achieve enlightenment
2 The Language Definition
3 The Source Text
4 The Scanner
4.1 The Character Class
4.2 The Scanner Class
4.3 A driver for the scanner
4.4 A bit of source code for the scanner to process
5 The Lexer
5.1 What is whitespace?
6 The Rules for a Programming Language
6.1 Tokenizing Rules
6.2 Writing a Lexer
6.3 Specifying keywords, symbols, token types, etc.
6.4 A Token class
6.5 A Lexer class
6.6 A driver for the lexer
6.7 Some source text to test the lexer
7 The Parser
7.1 Writing a Recursive Descent Parser
8 I achieve enlightenment (again)
8.1 Generating an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST)
8.2 A Node class for the AST
8.3 A recursive descent parser
8.4 A driver program for the recursive descent parser
8.5 The AST it generated
1 About this document

A few months ago I began a personal project to learn a bit more about how parsers and compilers work.
http://parsingintro.sourceforge.net/
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Here are some notes that I made during that project. Maybe they will be of use to you.
1.1 What I want...

I'd like to learn how to write parsers and compilers. If I could write my own parsers and compilers, I
could do things like:
write compilers or parsers for my own little languages
write a pretty printer for some of my favorite little languages
write a translator from one little language to another
To learn, I have decided to embark on a project to write a parser and a compiler in Python. Python is a
powerful, high-level, object-oriented language that is also very readable. It would allow me to work with
basic concepts without getting bogged down in language mechanics.
1.2 I achieve enlightenment

I had been studying the subject for some time and I had learned some basic concepts. But I was totally
confused by discussions that conflated the scanner, lexer, and parser some even used the terms
"scanner", "lexer", and "parser" interchangeably. Then I discovered How does an
interpreter/compiler work? and became enlightended. It clearly laid out the different functions of
the scanner, lexer, and parser. Here are the lines that triggered my awakening:
Source File > Scanner > Lexer > Parser > Interpreter/Code Generator
Scanner: This is the first module in a compiler or interpreter. Its job is to read the source file one
character at a time. It can also keep track of which line number and character is currently being read.
.... For now, assume that each time the scanner is called, it returns the next character in the file.
Lexer: This module serves to break up the source file into chunks (called tokens). It calls the scanner
to get characters one at a time and organizes them into tokens and token types. Thus, the lexer calls
the scanner to pass it one character at a time and groups them together and identifies them as tokens
for the language parser (which is the next stage).
Parser: This is the part of the compiler that really understands the syntax of the language. It calls the
lexer to get tokens and processes the tokens per the syntax of the language.
2 The Language Definition

Every compiler is written to process source files in a particular language. A COBOL compiler compiles
COBOL code; it doesn't compile Fortran. A Python interpreter parses and executes Python; not Ruby.
So the place to start in compiler development is with the language that I want to compile. In particular, I
need some mechanism for creating a precise, formal specification of the language that I want to compile.
That mechanism is EBNF. So the first step is to use EBNF to specify the language that I want to process.
But to begin with, I don't really need to know much about the particular language to write a scanner. So I
will defer thinking about EBNF and language specification until it I start to build the lexer.
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3 The Source Text

The source text contains the text of a program written in the specified language.
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4 The Scanner
The scanner's job is to read the source file one character at a time. For each character, it keeps
track of the line and character position where the character was found. Each time the scanner is
called, it reads the next character from the file and returns it.
So let's write a scanner.
4.1 The Character Class

Since we're all object-oriented now, we write two classes.
The first class is a Character class that will wrap a single character that the scanner retrieves from the
source text. In addition to holding the character itself (its cargo) it will hold information about the
location of the character in the source text. [SourceCode]
ENDMARK = "\0"
# aka "lowvalues"
#----------------------------------------------------------------------#
#
Character
#
#----------------------------------------------------------------------class Character:
"""
A Character object holds
- one character (self.cargo)
- the index of the character's position in the sourceText.
- the index of the line where the character was found in the sourceText.
- the index of the column in the line where the character was found in the sourceText.
- (a reference to) the entire sourceText (self.sourceText)
This information will be available to a token that uses this character.
If an error occurs, the token can use this information to report the
line/column number where the error occurred, and to show an image of the
line in sourceText where the error occurred.
"""
#------------------------------------------------------------------#
#------------------------------------------------------------------def __init__(self, c, lineIndex, colIndex, sourceIndex, sourceText):
"""
In Python, the __init__ method is the constructor.
"""
self.cargo
= c
self.sourceIndex
= sourceIndex
self.lineIndex
= lineIndex
self.colIndex
= colIndex
self.sourceText
= sourceText
#------------------------------------------------------------------# return a displayable string representation of the Character object
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#------------------------------------------------------------------def __str__(self):
"""
In Python, the __str__ method returns a string representation
of an object. In Java, this would be the toString() method.
"""
cargo = self.cargo
if
cargo == " "
: cargo = "
space"
elif cargo == "\n"
: cargo = "
newline"
elif cargo == "\t"
: cargo = "
tab"
elif cargo == ENDMARK : cargo = "
eof"
return (
str(self.lineIndex).rjust(6)
+ str(self.colIndex).rjust(4)
+ " "
+ cargo
)
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4.2 The Scanner Class

The second class is a Scanner class. When we instantiate this class, we will pass the constructor a string
containing the source text. The result will be a scanner object that is ready to scan that particular string of
source text. [SourceCode]
from genericCharacter import *

"""
A Scanner object reads through the sourceText
and returns one character at a time.
"""
#------------------------------------------------------------------#
#------------------------------------------------------------------def initialize(sourceTextArg):
global sourceText, lastIndex, sourceIndex, lineIndex, colIndex
sourceText = sourceTextArg
lastIndex
= len(sourceText) - 1
sourceIndex = -1
lineIndex
= 0
colIndex
= -1
#------------------------------------------------------------------#
#------------------------------------------------------------------def get():
"""
Return the next character in sourceText.
"""
global lastIndex, sourceIndex, lineIndex, colIndex
sourceIndex += 1
# increment the index in sourceText
# maintain the line count

if sourceIndex > 0:
if sourceText[sourceIndex - 1] == "\n":
#------------------------------------------------------# The previous character in sourceText was a newline
# character. So... we're starting a new line.
# Increment lineIndex and reset colIndex.
#------------------------------------------------------lineIndex +=1
colIndex = -1
colIndex += 1
if sourceIndex > lastIndex:
# We've read past the end of sourceText.
# Return the ENDMARK character.
char = Character(ENDMARK, lineIndex, colIndex, sourceIndex,sourceText)
else:
c
= sourceText[sourceIndex]
char = Character(c, lineIndex, colIndex, sourceIndex, sourceText)
return char
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4.3 A driver for the scanner
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Having created the scanner machinery, let's put it through its paces.
I create a driver program that sets up a string of source text, creates a scanner object to scan that source
text, and then displays the characters that it gets back from the scanner. [SourceCode]
writeln("Here are the characters returned by the scanner:")

writeln(" line col character")
# create a scanner (an instance of the Scanner class)
scanner.initialize(sourceText)
#-----------------------------------------------------------------# Call the scanner's get() method repeatedly
# to get the characters in the sourceText.
# Stop when we reach the ENDMARK.
#-----------------------------------------------------------------character = scanner.get()
# getfirst Character object from the scanner
while True:
writeln(character)
if character.cargo == scanner.ENDMARK: break
character = scanner.get()
# getnext
4.4 A bit of source code for the scanner to process

We specify the contents of the source text:
/* PROGRAM NAME: nxx1.txt

nxx is a simple programming language that provides:
numbers
strings
assignment statements
string concatenation
simple arithmetic operations
print capability
comments may be enclosed in slash+asterisk .. asterisk+slash
*/
alpha = 16 ;
beta = 2
;
resultName = "delta" ;
delta = alpha / beta ;
print "Value of " || resultName || " is: " ;
print delta ;
print "\n" ;
When we run the scanner driver program, it produces the following results.
Here are the characters returned by the scanner:

line col character
Page 8 of 39
0
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/
*
space
P
R
O
G
R
A
M
space
N
A
M
E
:
space
n
x
x
1
.
t
x
t
newline
newline
n
x
x
space
i
s
space
a
space
s
i
m
p
l
e
space
p
r
o
g
r
a
m
m
i
n
g
space
l
a
n
g
u
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a
g
e
space
t
h
a
t
space
p
r
o
v
i
d
e
s
:
newline
space
n
u
m
b
e
r
s
newline
space
s
t
r
i
n
g
s
newline
space
a
s
s
i
g
n
m
e
n
t
space
s
t
a
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newline
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space
s
t
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space
c
o
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newline
space
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space
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newline
space
p
r
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space
c
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a
p
a
b
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newline
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+
a
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k
space
.
.
space
a
s
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t
e
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k
+
s
l
a
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h
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*
/
newline
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l
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space
=
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1
6
space
;
newline
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space
=
space
2
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space
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;
newline
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e
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N
a
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space
=
space
"
d
e
l
t
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a
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;
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|
|
space
"
space
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:
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;
newline
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\
n
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eof
Page 15 of 39
1/13/15, 5:10 AM
5 The Lexer
A lexical analyser is also called a lexer or a tokenizer.
The lexer's job is to group the characters of the source file into chunks called tokens. (If the source text
was written in a natural language (English, Spanish, French, etc.) the tokens would correspond to
the words and punctuation marks in the text.) Each time the lexer is called, it calls the scanner
(perhaps several times) to get as many characters as it needs in order to assemble the characters into
a token. It determines the type of token that it has found (a string, a number, an identifier, a
comment, etc.) and returns the token.
A scanner can be pretty much language-agnostic, but a lexer needs to have a precise specification for the
language that it must tokenize. Suppose we want to process a language called nxx. Then the lexer needs to
know the answers to questions like these abut nxx:
What counts as whitespace?
How are strings (string literals) delimited single quotes? double quotes? both? other?
What symbols and operators does the language support? For example: ( ) + - = ;
What are the rules governing the formation of names (identifiers)? Can names contain dashes?
underscores?
What are the rules governing the formation of numbers (numeric literals)?
What are the rules for writing comments?
5.1 What is whitespace?

Most people think of whitespace as being any string that contains only instances of the space character,
the tab character, and the NL (newline) character (or the carriage return + linefeed characters (CRLF)
that Windows uses to indicate a newline).
For a lexer, a whitespace character is: a character whose sole purpose is to delimit tokens. In a COBOL
statement like this, for example:
MOVE STATE-ID TO HOLD-STATE-ID.
the spaces aren't significant in themselves, but without them the COBOL compiler would see:
MOVESTATE-IDTOHOLD-STATE-ID.
and wouldn't know what to make of it.

Whitespace characters are used by the lexer to detect the end of tokens, but generally are not passed on to
the parser. Here is (a rough approximation of) the list of the tokens that the lexer would pass to the
COBOL parser. Note that that the list does not include any whitespace tokens.
KEYWORD
VARIABLE
KEYWORD
VARIABLE
SYMBOL
MOVE
STATE-ID
TO
HOLD-STATE-ID
.
Page 16 of 39
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In many languages, the whitespace characters consist of the usual suspects: SPACE, TAB, NEWLINE. But
consider a language in which each statement must exist on its own line. For such a language the
NEWLINE character is not whitespace at all but a token indicating the end of a statement in the same
way that a semi-colon does in Java and PL/I. Another example: Python uses indentation (tabs or spaces)
rather than keywords or symbols (e.g. "do..end" or "{..}") to control scope. So for Python (in at least some
contexts) spaces and tabs are not whitespace characters.
Another case in which the lexer would pass whitespace tokens back to its caller is if the calling module is
making some modifications to the input text (for example, removing comments from the source code) but
otherwise leaving the source text intact, whitespace and all.
6 The Rules for a Programming Language

At the very simplest there are three kinds of rules for a language:
tokenizing rules
syntactic rules
semantic rules
For the lexer, we will need some tokenizing rules.
6.1 Tokenizing Rules

The standard way to specify rules for recognizing tokens is via a finite state machine (FSM), also known
as a deterministic finite automaton (DFA). So explanations of how to build a tokenizer often begin this
way: Build a FSM that.... Or this way: Write a regular expression to match....
But in many cases, you don't need the power of a full FSM the job can be done in a much simpler way.
For example, most programming languages have simple rules for identifier tokens that can be expressed
this way:
An identifier token can contain any of the following characters: <a list of characters goes
here>
An identifier token must start with one of the following characters: <a list of characters goes
here>
For example:
Identifiers can contain letters, numeric digits, underscores, and must begin with a letter.
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6.2 Writing a Lexer

So let's write a lexer.
First, we invent a simple language called nxx. We won't bother to define nxx very carefully -- we won't
need to do that in order to write a simple lexer that can process identifiers and whitespace.
We will need to define at least the rudiments of our language. That means specifying the symbols (the
assignment symbol, grouping symbols such as parentheses and brackets, symbols for mathematical
operations (plus, minus, etc.), and so on.We also need to define the rules for tokenizing comments, string
literals (strings), numeric literals (numbers), and identifiers. For example, for nxx we say that a string can
be contained in either single or double quotes, an identifier can contain letters, numeric digits, and
underscores, and must start with a letter, and so on. I defined these in a file called nxxSymbols.py.
6.3 Specifying keywords, symbols, token types, etc.

#---------------------------------------------------------# a list of keywords
#---------------------------------------------------------Keywords = """
if
then
else
elif
endif
while
loop
endloop
print
return
exit
"""
Keywords = Keywords.split()
#---------------------------------------------------------# a list of symbols that are one character long
#---------------------------------------------------------OneCharacterSymbols = """
=
( )
< >
/ * + ! &
. ;
"""
OneCharacterSymbols = OneCharacterSymbols.split()
#---------------------------------------------------------# a list of symbols that are two characters long
#---------------------------------------------------------TwoCharacterSymbols = """
==
<=
>=
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<>
!=
++
**
-+=
-=
||
"""
TwoCharacterSymbols = TwoCharacterSymbols.split()
import string
IDENTIFIER_STARTCHARS = string.letters
IDENTIFIER_CHARS
= string.letters + string.digits + "_"
NUMBER_STARTCHARS
NUMBER_CHARS
= string.digits
= string.digits + "."
STRING_STARTCHARS = "'" + '"'

WHITESPACE_CHARS = " \t\n"
#----------------------------------------------------------------------# TokenTypes for things other than symbols and keywords
#----------------------------------------------------------------------STRING
= "String"
IDENTIFIER
= "Identifier"
NUMBER
= "Number"
WHITESPACE
= "Whitespace"
COMMENT
= "Comment"
EOF
= "Eof"
Now we write two classes.
6.4 A Token class

The first class is a Token class that will wrap its cargo -- a string of characters that is the text of the
token. In addition to holding its cargo, the token will hold information about the location of the token
(actually, the location of its first character) in the source text. [SourceCode]
from genericScanner import *

class LexerError(Exception): pass
#----------------------------------------------------------------------#
#
Token
#
#----------------------------------------------------------------------class Token:
"""
A Token object is the kind of thing that the Lexer returns.
It holds:
- the text of the token (self.cargo)
- the type of token that it is
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- the line number and column index where the token starts
"""
#------------------------------------------------------------------#
#------------------------------------------------------------------def __init__(self, startChar):
"""
The constructor of the Token class
"""
self.cargo
= startChar.cargo
#---------------------------------------------------------# The token picks up information
# about its location in the sourceText
#---------------------------------------------------------self.sourceText = startChar.sourceText
self.lineIndex = startChar.lineIndex
self.colIndex
= startChar.colIndex
#---------------------------------------------------------# We won't know what kind of token we have until we have
# finished processing all of the characters in the token.
# So when we start, the token.type is None (aka null).
#---------------------------------------------------------self.type
= None
#------------------------------------------------------------------# return a displayable string representation of the token
#------------------------------------------------------------------def show(self,showLineNumbers=False,**kwargs):
"""
align=True shows token type left justified with dot leaders.
Specify align=False to turn this feature OFF.
"""
align = kwargs.get("align",True)
if align:
tokenTypeLen = 12
space = " "
else:
tokenTypeLen = 0
space = ""
if showLineNumbers:
s = str(self.lineIndex).rjust(6) + str(self.colIndex).rjust(4) + "
else:
s = ""
"
if self.type == self.cargo:
s = s + "Symbol".ljust(tokenTypeLen,".") + ":" + space + self.type
elif self.type == "Whitespace":
s = s + "Whitespace".ljust(tokenTypeLen,".") + ":" + space + repr(self.cargo)
else:
s = s + self.type.ljust(tokenTypeLen,".") + ":" + space + self.cargo
return s
guts = property(show)
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6.5 A Lexer class

The second class is a Lexer class. When we instantiate this class, we will pass the constructor a string
containing the source text. The lexer object will create a scanner object and pass the source text to it.
Then the lexer will get characters from the scanner, which will get them from the source text. The result
will be a lexer object that is ready to return the tokens in the source text. [SourceCode]
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#------------------------------------------------------------------#
#------------------------------------------------------------------def initialize(sourceText):
"""
"""
global scanner
# initialize the scanner with the sourceText
scanner.initialize(sourceText)
# use the scanner to read the first character from the sourceText
getChar()
#------------------------------------------------------------------#
#------------------------------------------------------------------def get():
"""
Construct and return the next token in the sourceText.
"""
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------# read past and ignore any whitespace characters or any comments -- START
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------while c1 in WHITESPACE_CHARS or c2 == "/*":
# process whitespace
while c1 in WHITESPACE_CHARS:
token = Token(character)
token.type = WHITESPACE
getChar()
while c1 in WHITESPACE_CHARS:
token.cargo += c1
getChar()
# return token
# only if we want the lexer to return whitespace
# process comments
while c2 == "/*":
# we found comment start
token.type = COMMENT
token.cargo = c2
getChar() # read past the first character of a 2-character token
getChar() # read past the second character of a 2-character token
while not (c2 == "*/"):
if c1 == ENDMARK:
token.abort("Found end of file before end of comment")
token.cargo += c1
getChar()
token.cargo += c2
# append the */ to the token cargo
getChar() # read past the first
character of a 2-character token
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# return token # only if we want the lexer to return comments
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------# read past and ignore any whitespace characters or any comments -- END
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------# Create a new token. The token will pick up
# its line and column information from the character.
if c1 == ENDMARK:
token.type = EOF
return token
if c1 in IDENTIFIER_STARTCHARS:
token.type = IDENTIFIER
getChar()
while c1 in IDENTIFIER_CHARS:
token.cargo += c1
getChar()
if token.cargo in Keywords: token.type = token.cargo
return token
if c1 in NUMBER_STARTCHARS:
token.type = NUMBER
getChar()
while c1 in NUMBER_CHARS:
token.cargo += c1
getChar()
return token
if c1 in STRING_STARTCHARS:
# remember the quoteChar (single or double quote)
# so we can look for the same character to terminate the quote.
quoteChar
= c1
getChar()
while c1 != quoteChar:
if c1 == ENDMARK:
token.abort("Found end of file before end of string literal")
token.cargo += c1
getChar()
token.cargo += c1
getChar()
token.type = STRING
return token
# append quoted character to text

# append close quote to text
if c2 in TwoCharacterSymbols:
token.cargo = c2
token.type = token.cargo # for symbols, the token type is same as the cargo
getChar() # read past the first character of a 2-character token
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return token
if c1 in OneCharacterSymbols:
token.type = token.cargo # for symbols, the token type is same as the cargo
getChar() # read past the symbol
return token
# else.... We have encountered something that we don't recognize.
token.abort("I found a character or symbol that I do not recognize: " + dq(c1))
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6.6 A driver for the lexer

Having created the lexer machinery, let's put it through its paces. We will create a driver program that
sets up a string of source text, creates a lexer object to tokenize that source text, and then displays the
tokens that it gets back from the lexer. [SourceCode]
Here is the core code of the driver program.
#----------------------------------------------------------------------#
#
main
#
#----------------------------------------------------------------------def main(sourceText):
global f
f = open(outputFilename, "w")
writeln("Here are the tokens returned by the lexer:")
# create an instance of a lexer
lexer.initialize(sourceText)
#-----------------------------------------------------------------# use the lexer.getlist() method repeatedly to get the tokens in
# the sourceText. Then print the tokens.
#-----------------------------------------------------------------while True:
token = lexer.get()
writeln(token.show(True))
if token.type == EOF: break
f.close()
6.7 Some source text to test the lexer

Here is the source text that we will pass to the lexer.
/* PROGRAM NAME: nxx1.txt

nxx is a simple programming language that provides:
numbers
strings
assignment statements
string concatenation
simple arithmetic operations
print capability
comments may be enclosed in slash+asterisk .. asterisk+slash
*/
alpha = 16 ;
beta = 2
;
resultName = "delta" ;
delta = alpha / beta ;
print "Value of " || resultName || " is: " ;
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print delta ;
print "\n" ;
Page 26 of 39
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When we run the lexer on this source code, the lexer it produces the following results. That is, it produces
this list of tokens.
Here are the tokens returned by the lexer:

12
0 Identifier..: alpha
12
6 Symbol......: =
12
8 Number......: 16
12 11 Symbol......: ;
13
0 Identifier..: beta
13
5 Symbol......: =
13
7 Number......: 2
13 11 Symbol......: ;
14
0 Identifier..: resultName
14 11 Symbol......: =
14 13 String......: "delta"
14 21 Symbol......: ;
15
0 Identifier..: delta
15
6 Symbol......: =
15
8 Identifier..: alpha
15 14 Symbol......: /
15 16 Identifier..: beta
15 21 Symbol......: ;
16
0 Symbol......: print
16
6 String......: "Value of "
16 18 Symbol......: ||
16 21 Identifier..: resultName
16 32 Symbol......: ||
16 35 String......: " is: "
16 43 Symbol......: ;
17
17
6 Identifier..: delta
17 12 Symbol......: ;
18
18
6 String......: "\n"
18 11 Symbol......: ;
18 12 Eof.........: ?
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7 The Parser
7.1 Writing a Recursive Descent Parser
Parsing Techniques (first edition, 1990) by Dick Grune and Ceriel Jacobs is a great book about
parsing techniques. This book is freely downloadable from http://www.cs.vu.nl/~dick/PTAPG.html.
I learned a lot from the book.
The first thing I tried to do was to implement (in Python) what they consider the best-ever recursivedescent parsing technique. It is explained on pp. 137-140 of their book. Unfortunately, the results were
disappointing. I won't dispute their claim that this is a fabulous technique. But I found it clumsy and
difficult to understand. I certainly couldn't just sit down and write a parser using the technique.
I had always heard that it wasn't difficult to implement a recursive-descent parser. But that technique was
much too difficult (for me at least).
8 I achieve enlightenment (again)

While searching the Web for more information about recursive-descent parsers, I found the WikiPedia
article on recursive-descent parsers, complete with EBNF and example in C. And I could see that it is easy
to write a recursive-descent parser. As the Wikipedia article puts it "Notice how closely the [code]
mirrors the grammar. There is a procedure for each nonterminal in the grammar."
Here is the Python translation of that code.
token = ""
ASSIGNMENT
BEGIN
CALL
COMMA
CONST
DO
END
EQ
GE
GT
IF
LE
LPAREN
LT
MINUS
MULTIPLY
NE
ODD
PERIOD
PLUS
PROC
RPAREN
SEMICOLON
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
":="
"begin"
"call"
","
"const"
"do"
"end"
"=="
">="
">"
"if"
"<="
"("
"<"
"-"
"*"
"!="
"odd"
"."
"+"
"proc"
")"
";"
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SLASH
THEN
VAR
WHILE
=
=
=
=
"/"
"then"
"var"
"while"
IDENTIFIER
NUMBER
= "IDENTIFIER"
= "NUMBER"
class ParserException(Exception):
pass
def error(msg):
quotedToken = '"%s"' % token
msg = msg + " while processing token " + quotedToken
raise ParserException("\n\n" + msg)
def found(argToken):
if (token == argToken):
getToken()
return True
return False
def expect(argToken):
if found(argToken):
return # no problem
else:
quotedToken = '"%s"' % argToken
error("I was expecting to find token "
+ quotedToken
+ "\n but I found something else" )
#-------------------------------------------------def factor():
"""
factor = IDENTIFIER | NUMBER | "(" expression ")"
.
"""
if found(IDENTIFIER):
pass
elif found(NUMBER):
pass
elif found(LPAREN):
expression()
expect(RPAREN)
else:
error("factor: syntax error")
getToken()
#-------------------------------------------------def term():
"""
term = factor {("*"|"/") factor}
.
"""
factor()
while found(MULTIPLY) or found(SLASH):
factor()
#-------------------------------------------------def expression():
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"""
expression = ["+"|"-"] term {("+"|"-") term}
.
"""
if found(PLUS) or found(MINUS):
pass
term()
while found(PLUS) or found(MINUS):
term()
#-------------------------------------------------def condition():
"""
condition =
"odd" expression
| expression ("="|"#"|"<"|"<="|">"|">=") expression
.
"""
if found(ODD):
expression()
else:
expression()
if (
found(EQ) or found(NE) or found(LT)
or found(LE) or found(GT) or found(GE) ):
expression()
else:
error("condition: found invalid operator")
getToken()
#-------------------------------------------------def statement():
"""
statement =
[IDENTIFIER ":=" expression
| "call" IDENTIFIER
| "begin" statement {";" statement} "end"
| "if" condition "then" statement
| "while" condition "do" statement
]
.
"""
if found(IDENTIFIER):
expect(ASSIGNMENT)
expression()
elif found(CALL):
expect(IDENTIFIER)
elif found(BEGIN):
statement()
while found(SEMICOLON):
statement()
expect(END)
elif found(IF):
condition()
expect(THEN)
statement()
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elif found(WHILE):
condition()
expect(DO)
statement()
#-------------------------------------------------def block():
"""
block =
["const" IDENTIFIER "=" NUMBER {"," IDENTIFIER "=" NUMBER} ";"]
["var" IDENTIFIER {"," IDENTIFIER} ";"]
{"procedure" IDENTIFIER ";" block ";"} statement
.
"""
if found(CONST):
expect(IDENTIFIER)
expect(EQ)
expect(NUMBER)
while found(COMMA):
expect(IDENTIFIER)
expect(EQ)
expect(NUMBER)
expect(SEMICOLON)
if found(VAR):
expect(IDENTIFIER)
while found(COMMA):
expect(IDENTIFIER)
expect(SEMICOLON)
while found(PROC):
expect(IDENTIFIER)
expect(SEMICOLON)
block()
expect(SEMICOLON)
statement()
#-------------------------------------------------def program():
"""
program = block "."
.
"""
getToken()
block()
expect(PERIOD)
8.1 Generating an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST)

Many discussions of parsers omit the most important thing that the purpose of a parser is to produce
an abstract syntax tree, and AST. So here is some code for a node in an AST.
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8.2 A Node class for the AST

class Node:
def __init__(self, token=None):
self.token = token
self.level = 0
self.children = [] # a list of my children
def add(self, token):
"""
make a node out of a token and add it to self.children
"""
self.addNode( Node(token) )
def addNode(self, node):
"""
add a node to self.children
"""
node.level = self.level + 1
self.children.append(node)
def toString(self):
s = "
" * self.level
if self.token == None: s += "ROOT\n"
else: s += self.token.cargo + "\n"
for child in self.children:
s += child.toString()
return s
8.3 A recursive descent parser

So here is a Python recursive descent parser for nxx.
"""
A recursive descent parser for nxx1,
as defined in nxx1ebnf.txt
"""
import nxxLexer as lexer
from
nxxSymbols import *
from
genericAstNode import Node
class ParserError(Exception): pass
def dq(s): return '"%s"' %s
token
= None
verbose = False
indent = 0
numberOperator = ["+","-","/","*"]
#------------------------------------------------------------------http://parsingintro.sourceforge.net/
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#
#------------------------------------------------------------------def getToken():
global token
if verbose:
if token:
# print the current token, before we get the next one
#print (" "*40 ) + token.show()
print((" "*indent) + "
(" + token.show(align=False) + ")")
token = lexer.get()
#------------------------------------------------------------------#
push and pop
#------------------------------------------------------------------def push(s):
global indent
indent += 1
if verbose: print((" "*indent) + " " + s)
def pop(s):
global indent
if verbose:
#print(("
pass
indent -= 1
"*indent) + " " + s + ".end")
#------------------------------------------------------------------# decorator track0

#------------------------------------------------------------------def track0(func):
def newfunc():
push(func.__name__)
func()
pop(func.__name__)
return newfunc
#------------------------------------------------------------------# decorator track
#------------------------------------------------------------------def track(func):
def newfunc(node):
push(func.__name__)
func(node)
pop(func.__name__)
return newfunc
#------------------------------------------------------------------#
#------------------------------------------------------------------def error(msg):
token.abort(msg)
#------------------------------------------------------------------#
foundOneOf
#------------------------------------------------------------------def foundOneOf(argTokenTypes):
"""
argTokenTypes should be a list of argTokenType
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"""
for argTokenType in argTokenTypes:
#print "foundOneOf", argTokenType, token.type
if token.type == argTokenType:
return True
return False
#------------------------------------------------------------------#
found
#------------------------------------------------------------------def found(argTokenType):
return True
return False
#------------------------------------------------------------------#
consume
#------------------------------------------------------------------def consume(argTokenType):
"""
Consume a token of a given type and get the next token.
If the current token is NOT of the expected type, then
raise an error.
"""
getToken()
else:
error("I was expecting to find "
+ dq(argTokenType)
+ " but I found "
+ token.show(align=False)
)
#------------------------------------------------------------------#
parse
#------------------------------------------------------------------def parse(sourceText, **kwargs):
global lexer, verbose
verbose = kwargs.get("verbose",False)
# create a Lexer object & pass it the sourceText
lexer.initialize(sourceText)
getToken()
program()
if verbose:
print "~"*80
print "Successful parse!"
print "~"*80
return ast
#-------------------------------------------------------#
program
#-------------------------------------------------------@track0
def program():
"""
program = statement {statement} EOF.
"""
global ast
node = Node()
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statement(node)
while not found(EOF):
statement(node)
consume(EOF)
ast = node
#-------------------------------------------------------#
statement
#-------------------------------------------------------@track
def statement(node):
"""
statement = printStatement | assignmentStatement .
assignmentStatement = variable "=" expression ";".
printStatement
= "print" expression ";".
"""
if found("print"):
printStatement(node)
else:
assignmentStatement(node)
#-------------------------------------------------------#
expression
#-------------------------------------------------------@track
def expression(node):
"""
expression = stringExpression | numberExpression.
/* "||" is the concatenation operator, as in PL/I */
stringExpression = (stringLiteral | variable) {"||"
stringExpression}.
numberExpression = (numberLiteral | variable) { numberOperator numberExpression}.
numberOperator = "+" | "-" | "/" | "*" .
"""
if found(STRING):
stringLiteral(node)
while found("||"):
getToken()
stringExpression(node)
elif found(NUMBER):
numberLiteral(node)
while foundOneOf(numberOperator):
node.add(token)
getToken()
numberExpression(node)
else:
node.add(token)
consume(IDENTIFIER)
if found("||"):
while found("||"):
getToken()
elif foundOneOf(numberOperator):
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node.add(token)
getToken()
#-------------------------------------------------------#
assignmentStatement
#-------------------------------------------------------@track
def assignmentStatement(node):
"""
assignmentStatement = variable "=" expression ";".
"""
identifierNode = Node(token)
consume(IDENTIFIER)
operatorNode = Node(token)
consume("=")
node.addNode(operatorNode)
operatorNode.addNode(identifierNode)
expression(operatorNode)
consume(";")
#-------------------------------------------------------#
printStatement
#-------------------------------------------------------@track
def printStatement(node):
"""
printStatement
= "print" expression ";".
"""
statementNode = Node(token)
consume("print")
node.addNode(statementNode)
expression(statementNode)
consume(";")
#-------------------------------------------------------#
stringExpression
#-------------------------------------------------------@track
def stringExpression(node):
"""
/* "||" is the concatenation operator, as in PL/I */
stringExpression = (stringLiteral | variable) {"||" stringExpression}.
"""
if found(STRING):
node.add(token)
getToken()
while found("||"):
getToken()
else:
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node.add(token)
consume(IDENTIFIER)
while found("||"):
getToken()
#-------------------------------------------------------#
numberExpression
#-------------------------------------------------------@track
def numberExpression(node):
"""
numberExpression = (numberLiteral | variable) { numberOperator numberExpression}.
numberOperator = "+" | "-" | "/" | "*" .
"""
if found(NUMBER):
numberLiteral(node)
else:
node.add(token)
consume(IDENTIFIER)
node.add(token)
getToken()
#-------------------------------------------------------#
stringLiteral
#-------------------------------------------------------def stringLiteral(node):
node.add(token)
getToken()
#-------------------------------------------------------#
numberLiteral
#-------------------------------------------------------def numberLiteral(node):
node.add(token)
getToken()
8.4 A driver program for the recursive descent parser

Here is the code for its driver.
import nxxParser as parser

#------------------------------------------------# support for writing output to a file
#------------------------------------------------def writeln(*args):
for arg in args:
f.write(str(arg))
f.write("\n")
if __name__ == "__main__":
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outputFilename = "output\\nxxParserDriver_output.txt"
sourceFilename = "input\\nxx1.txt"
sourceText = open(sourceFilename).read()
ast = parser.parse(sourceText, verbose=False)
print "~"*80
print "Here is the abstract syntax tree:"
print "~"*80
f = open(outputFilename,"w")
f.write(ast.toString())
f.close()
print(open(outputFilename).read())
Page 38 of 39
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8.5 The AST it generated

And here is the output of the nxx parser when run on nxx1.txt. This is (as near as I can tell) pretty close to
an AST.
ROOT
=
alpha
16
=
beta
2
=
resultName
"delta"
=
delta
alpha
/
beta
print
"Value of "
resultName
" is: "
print
delta
print
"\n"
Download this zip file to obtain the source code of files discussed in this article.
End of this article/web page.
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