How to walk the parse tree to check for syntax errors in ANTLR - parsing

Question

I have written a fairly simple language in ANTLR. Before actually interpreting the code written by a user, I wish to parse the code and check for syntax errors. If found I wish to output the cause for the error and exit. How can I check the code for syntax errors and output the corresponding error. Please not that for my purposes the error statements similar to those generated by the ANTLR tool are more than sufficient. For example
line 3:0 missing ';'

Answer 1

There is ErrorListener that you can use to get more information.
For example:
...
FormulaParser parser = new FormulaParser(tokens);
parser.IsCompletion = options.IsForCompletion;
ErrorListener errListener = new ErrorListener();
parser.AddErrorListener(errListener);
IParseTree tree = parser.formula();
Only thing you need to do is to attach ErrorListener to the parser.
Here is the code of ErrorListener.
/// <summary>
/// Error listener recording all errors that Antlr parser raises during parsing.
/// </summary>
internal class ErrorListener : BaseErrorListener
{
private const string Eof = "the end of formula";
public ErrorListener()
{
ErrorMessages = new List<ErrorInfo>();
}
public bool ErrorOccured { get; private set; }
public List<ErrorInfo> ErrorMessages { get; private set; }
public override void SyntaxError(IRecognizer recognizer, IToken offendingSymbol, int line, int charPositionInLine, string msg, RecognitionException e)
{
ErrorOccured = true;
if (e == null || e.GetType() != typeof(NoViableAltException))
{
ErrorMessages.Add(new ErrorInfo()
{
Message = ConvertMessage(msg),
StartIndex = offendingSymbol.StartIndex,
Column = offendingSymbol.Column + 1,
Line = offendingSymbol.Line,
Length = offendingSymbol.Text.Length
});
return;
}
ErrorMessages.Add(new ErrorInfo()
{
Message = string.Format("{0}{1}", ConvertToken(offendingSymbol.Text), " unexpected"),
StartIndex = offendingSymbol.StartIndex,
Column = offendingSymbol.Column + 1,
Line = offendingSymbol.Line,
Length = offendingSymbol.Text.Length
});
}
public override void ReportAmbiguity(Antlr4.Runtime.Parser recognizer, DFA dfa, int startIndex, int stopIndex, bool exact, BitSet ambigAlts, ATNConfigSet configs)
{
ErrorOccured = true;
ErrorMessages.Add(new ErrorInfo()
{
Message = "Ambiguity", Column = startIndex, StartIndex = startIndex
});
base.ReportAmbiguity(recognizer, dfa, startIndex, stopIndex, exact, ambigAlts, configs);
}
private string ConvertToken(string token)
{
return string.Equals(token, "<EOF>", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase)
? Eof
: token;
}
private string ConvertMessage(string message)
{
StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder(message);
builder.Replace("<EOF>", Eof);
return builder.ToString();
}
}
It is some dummy listener, but you can see what it does. And that you can tell if the error is syntax error, or some ambiguity error. After parsing, you can ask directly the errorListener, if some error occurred.