I have this grammar:
grammar MkSh;
script
: (statement
| targetRule
)*
;
statement
: assignment
;
assignment
: ID '=' STRING
;
targetRule
: TARGET ':' TARGET*
;
ID
: ('a'..'z'|'A'..'Z'|'_') ('a'..'z'|'A'..'Z'|'0'..'9'|'_')*
;
WS
: ( ' '
| '\t'
| '\r'
| '\n'
) -> channel(HIDDEN)
;
STRING
: '\"' CHR* '\"'
;
fragment
CHR
: ('a'..'z'|'A'..'Z'|' ')
;
TARGET
: ('a'..'z'|'A'..'Z'|'0'..'9'|'_'|'-'|'/'|'.')+
;
and this input file:
hello="world"
target: CLASSES
When running my parser I'm getting this error:
line 3:6 mismatched input ':' expecting '='
line 3:15 mismatched input ';' expecting '='
Which is because of the parser is taking "target" as an ID instead of a TARGET. I want the parser to choose the rule based on the separator character (':' vs '=').
How can I get that to happen?
(This is my first Antlr project so I'm open to anything.)
First, you need to know that the word target is matched as a ID token and not as a TARGET token, and since you have written the rule ID before TARGET, it will always be recognized as ID by the lexer. Notice that the word target completely complies to both ID and TARGET lexer rule, (I'm going to suppose that you are writing a laguage), meaning that the target which is a keyword can also be used as an id. In the book - "The definitive ANTLR reference" there is a subtitle "Treating Keywords As Identifiers" that deals with exactely these kinds of issues. I suggest you take a look at that. Or if you prefer the quick answer the solution is to use lexer modes. Also would be better to split grammar into parser and lexer grammar.
As #cantSleepNow alludes to, you've defined a token (TARGET) that is a lexical superset of another token (ID), and then told the lexer to only tokenize a string as TARGET if it cannot be tokenized as ID. All made more obscure by the fact that ANTLR lexing rules look like ANTLR parsing rules, though they are really quite different beasts.
(Warning: writing off the top of my head without testing :-)
Your real project might be more complex, but in the possibly simplified example you posted, you could defer distinguishing the two to the parsing phase, instead of distinguishing them in the lexer:
id : TARGET
{ complain if not legal identifier (e.g., contains slashes, etc.) }
;
assignment
: id '=' STRING
;
Seems like that would solve the lexing issue, and allow you to give a more intelligent error message than "syntax error" when a user gets the syntax for ID wrong. The grammar remains ambiguous, but maybe ANTLR roulette will happen to make the choice you prefer in the ambiguous case. Of course, unambiguous grammers tend to make for languages that humans find more readable, and now you can see why the classic makefile syntax requires a newline after an assignment or target rule.
Related
I want to parse Smalltalk.
Normally in a sequence of expressions, they need a PERIOD token (.) in between as a separator, like the ';' in java.
An expression alone does not need the PERIOD.
Hence i match this PERIOD in the expressions rule:
expressions : expression (PERIOD expression)*;
And the different sub-rules for the specific expression do not match the PERIOD by themselves.
However, there is one special type of expression, that calls to native libraries:
<primitive: ABC>
And when this is followed by another expression, the PERIOD is surprisingly not needed.
How can such a situation be handled?
Perhaps injecting a PERIOD. From within the "primitive" rule, tell the lexer to inject a PERIOD token next. But how?
Or is there a better solution for this situation?
Frank
Perhaps something like this:
expressions
: start_expression* expression '.'?
;
start_expression
: expression '.'
| pragma
;
expression
: assignment
| pragma
;
assignment
: ID ':=' NUMBER
;
pragma
: '<' ID ':' ID '>'
;
I'm using the ANTLR 4 plugin in IntelliJ, and I have the most bizarre bug. I'll start with the relevant parser/lexer rules:
// Take care of whitespace.
WS : [ \r\t\f\n]+ -> skip;
OTHER: . -> skip;
STRING
: '"' [A-z ]+ '"'
;
evaluate // starting rule.
: textbox? // could be an empty textbox.
;
textbox
: (row '\n')*
;
row
: ability
| ability_list
ability
: activated_ability
| triggered_ability
| static_ability
triggered_ability
: trigger_words ',' STRING
;
trigger_words
: ('when'|'whenever'|'as') whenever_triggers|'at'
;
whenever_triggers
: triggerer (('or'|'and') triggerer)* // this line has the issue.
;
triggerer
: self
self: '~'
I pass it this text: whenever ~ or ~, and it fails on the or, saying line 1:10 mismatched input ' or' expecting {'or', 'and'}. However, if I add a space to the whenever_triggers rule's or string (making it ' or'|'and'), it works fine.
The weirdest thing is that if I try whenever ~ and ~, it works fine even without the rule having a space in the and string. This doesn't change if I make 'and'|'or' a lexer rule either. It's just bizarre. I've confirmed this bug happens when running the 'test rig' in Antlrworks 2, so it's not just an IntelliJ thing.
This is an image of the parse tree when the error occurs:
Alright you have found the answer more or less by yourself so with this answer of mine I will focus on explaining why the problem occured in the first place.
First of all - for everyone stumbling upon this question - the problem was that he had another implicit lexer rule defined that looked like this ' or' (notice the whitespace). Changing that to 'or' resolved the problem.
But why was that a problem?
In order to understand that you have to understand what ANTLR does if you write '<something>' in one of your parser rules: When compiling the grammar it will generate a new lexer rule for each of those declarations. These lexer rules will be created before the lexer rules defined in your grammar. The lexer itself will match the given input into tokens and for that it processes each lexer rule at a time in the order they have been declared. Therefore it will always start with the implicit token definitions and then move on to the topmost "real" lexer rule.
The problem is that the lexer isn't too clever about this process that means once it has matched some input with the current lexer rule it will create a respective token and moves on with the trailing input.
As a result a lexer rule that comes afterwards that would have matched the input as well (but as another token as it is a different lexer rule) will be skipped so that the respective input might not have the expected token type because the lexer rules have overwrritten themselves.
In your example the self-overwriting rules are ' or'(Token 1) and 'or'(Token 2). Each of those implicit lexer rule declarations will result in a different lexer rule and as the first one got matched I assume that it is declared before the second one.
Now look at your input: whenever ~ or ~ The lexer will start interpreting it and the first rule it comes across is ' or' (After the start is matched of course) and it will match the input as there really is a space before the or. Therefore it will match it as Token 1.
The parser on the other hand is expecting a Token 2 at this point so that it will complain about the given input (although it really is complaining about the wrong token type). Altering the input to whenever ~or ~ will result in the correct interpretation.
Exactly that is the reason why you shouldn't use implicit token definitions in your grammar (unless it is really small). Create a new lexer rule for every input and start with the most specific rules. That means rules that match special character sequences (e.g. keywords) should be declared before general lexer rules like ID or STRING or something like that. Rules that will match all the characters in order to prevent the lexer from throwing an error upon unrecognized input have to declared last as they would overwrite every lexer rule after them.
Calculator math operator precedence is often remembered pneumonic PMDAS.
The grammar on the ANTLR home page (using the same abbreviations) has order MDASP. This isn't PMDAS or reverse PMDAS like I would expect. E.g. this stackoverflow answer contains a grammar that looks like PMDAS.
But no matter what expressions I put into the command line; the parse tree looks correct!
grammar Expr;
prog: (expr NEWLINE)* ;
expr: expr ('*'|'/') expr
| expr ('+'|'-') expr
| INT
| '(' expr ')'
;
NEWLINE : [\r\n]+ ;
INT : [0-9]+ ;
How does this work?
The question is a little tricky to answer as im not entirely sure what you were trying to parse but pseudo code for what this grammar expects may help you understand it:
An int is one or more numbers from 0 to 9
A new line is one or more \r\n
an (expr)ession is made up of any of these:
an expression with a '*' or '/' and another expression
an expression with a '+' or '-' and another expression
an int
a curly brace containing an expression followed by a curly brace
the (prog)ram is made up of zero or more expressions followed by new lines.
Also remember that ANTLR:
goes for the longest sequence first. if two rules or more match the
longest possible sequence then it chooses the lexical rule specified
first
This link may be very useful to you. Anyway if you post the tree you are struggling to understand we could try and help you further. Good luck with your project.
Trying to build a grammar for PowerScript language. I split the language in several parts and everything seems to be working except for the simple headers. It seems that the $ simbol can't be recognized. Could anyone help me a little? ( I just copy the small example I'm trying)
grammar PowerScript;
compilationUnit : Header EOF;
fragment
Header : ID '.' ID;
ID : [a-zA-Z0-9$_]+ ;
test file just contains:
$PBExportHeader$n_logversion.sru
Thanks
The compilationUnit rule is a parser rule. Parser rules cannot refer to lexer fragments. Just remove the fragment qualifier to make Header a proper lexer rule.
Update
Antlr4 is fully Unicode capable. Just include the characters in standard Unicode encoding form:
ID : ( [a-zA-Z0-9$_] | '\uD83D\uDCB2' )+ ; // Unicode heavy Dollar sign
Here is a related topic for previous ANTLR version :
Java ANTLR how to ignore part of rule? ignore part after subrule
With a lexer rule like :
R1
: [a-zA-Z0-9]* ';'
;
For example i have this input text :
test;rezrezr
zrezrzerz
It will match "test;" wich is correct. I only need the "test" string.
Do i need to take care of ';' character manually in a custom listener for example ? Or is there a way to specify in the grammar that i want to avoid it (only using lexer rules) ?
UPDATE
test1;rezrezr
zrezrzerz
test2;rezrezr
zrezrzerz
If you want to avoid the ; character, simply remove it from the lexer rule. Note that I also changed the * to a + to ensure that R1 is never a zero-length token.
R1
: [a-zA-Z0-9]+
;