CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonparsingparseccombinators
Jason Dagit
Jason Dagit

Reputation: 13844

Python implementation of Parsec?

I recently wrote a parser in Python using Ply (it's a python reimplementation of yacc). When I was almost done with the parser I discovered that the grammar I need to parse requires me to do some look up during parsing to inform the lexer. Without doing a look up to inform the lexer I cannot correctly parse the strings in the language.

Given than I can control the state of the lexer from the grammar rules I think I'll be solving my use case using a look up table in the parser module, but it may become too difficult to maintain/test. So I want to know about some of the other options.

In Haskell I would use Parsec, a library of parsing functions (known as combinators). Is there a Python implementation of Parsec? Or perhaps some other production quality library full of parsing functionality so I can build a context sensitive parser in Python?

EDIT: All my attempts at context free parsing have failed. For this reason, I don't expect ANTLR to be useful here.

Upvotes: 16

Views: 6122

Answers (5)

rcreswick
rcreswick

Reputation: 16823

PySec is another monadic parser, I don't know much about it, but it's worth looking at here

Upvotes: 6

Eli Bendersky
Eli Bendersky

Reputation: 273376

Nothing prevents you for diverting your parser from the "context free" path using PLY. You can pass information to the lexer during parsing, and in this way achieve full flexibility. I'm pretty sure that you can parse anything you want with PLY this way.

For a hands-on example, consider - it is a parser for ANSI C written in Python with PLY. It solves the classic C typedef - identifier problem (that makes C's grammar non context-sensitive) by populating a symbol table in the parser that is being used in the lexer to resolve symbol names as either types or not.

Upvotes: 2

Peter Hart
Peter Hart

Reputation: 4975

I believe that pyparsing is based on the same principles as parsec.

Upvotes: 10

nimish
nimish

Reputation: 4992

There's ANTLR, which is LL(*), there's PyParsing, which is more object friendly and is sort of like a DSL, and then there's Parsing which is like OCaml's Menhir.

Upvotes: 1

PW.
PW.

Reputation: 3725

An option you may consider, if an LL parser is ok to you, is to give ANTLR a try, it can generate python too (actually it is LL(*) as they name it, * stands for the quantity of lookahead it can cope with).

Upvotes: 5

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