Characters Matching Multiple Lexer Rules in ANTLR - parsing

I've defined multiple lexer rules that potentially matches the same character sequence. For example:
LBRACE: '{' ;
RBRACE: '}' ;
LPARENT: '(' ;
RPARENT: ')' ;
LBRACKET: '[' ;
RBRACKET: ']' ;
SEMICOLON: ';' ;
ASTERISK: '*' ;
AMPERSAND: '&' ;
IGNORED_SYMBOLS: ('!' | '#' | '%' | '^' | '-' | '+' | '=' |
'\\'| '|' | ':' | '"' | '\''| '<' | '>' | ',' | '.' |'?' | '/' ) ;
// WS comments*****************************
WS: (' '|'\n'| '\r'|'\t'|'\f' )+ {$channel=HIDDEN;};
ML_COMMENT: '/*' .* '*/' {$channel=HIDDEN;};
SL_COMMENT: '//' .* '\r'? '\n' {$channel=HIDDEN;};
STRING_LITERAL: '"' (STR_ESC | ~( '"' ))* '"';
fragment STR_ESC: '\\' '"' ;
CHAR_LITERAL : '\'' (CH_ESC | ~( '\'' )) '\'' ;
fragment CH_ESC : '\\' '\'';
My IGNORED_SYMBOLS and ASTERISK match /, " and * respectively. Since they're placed (unintentionally) before my comment and string literal rules which also match /* and ", I expect the comment and string literal rules would be disabled (unintentionally) . But surprisely, the ML_COMMENT, SL_COMMENT and STRING_LITERAL rules still work correctly.
This is somewhat confusing. Isn't that a /, whether it is part of /* or just a standalone /, will always be matched and consumed by the IGNORED_SYMBOLS first before it has any chance to be matched by the ML_COMMENT?
What is the way the lexer decides which rules to apply if the characters match more than one rule?

What is the way the lexer decides which rules to apply if the characters match more than one rule?
Lexer rules are matched from top to bottom. In case two (or more) rules match the same number of characters, the one that is defined first has precedence over the one(s) later defined in the grammar. In case a rule matches N number of characters and a later rule matches the same N characters plus 1 or more characters, then the later rule is matched (greedy match).
Take the following rules for example:
DO : 'do';
ID : 'a'..'z'+;
The input "do" would obviously be matched by the rule DO.
And input like: "done" would be greedily matched by ID. It is not tokenized as the 2 tokens: [DO:"do"] followed by [ID:"ne"].

Related

Why doesn't Bison accept this grammar file?

When I use the command bison -d -o parser.java parser.y to generate a parser from my grammar file parser.y, Bison produces the following error:
:8.8-10: syntax error, unexpected string, expecting char or identifier or type
Here is the file parser.y:
%{
import java.util.;
import java.io.;
%}
%start PROGRAM
%token number identifier function break call if else let read return while write
%token "(" ")" "{" "}" ";" "=" "+" "-" "" "/" "%" "<" ">" " <= " " >= " "==" "!=" "&" "|" "~" "!"
%left "+" "-"
%left "" "/" "%"
%left "&" "|"
%nonassoc "!"
%type <Node> PROGRAM FUNCTION PARAMLIST BLOCK STATEMENT IF ELSE EXPR
%type <String> identifier
%type <Integer> number
%union {
Node node;
String identifier;
int number;
}
%%
PROGRAM:
| PROGRAM FUNCTION
| BLOCK
;
FUNCTION:
function identifier '(' PARAMLIST ')' BLOCK
;
PARAMLIST:
identifier
| identifier ',' PARAMLIST
|
;
BLOCK:
'{' STATEMENT '}'
;
STATEMENT:
BREAK
| CALL ';'
| IF
| LET
| READ
| RETURN
| WHILE
| WRITE
;
BREAK:
break ';'
;
CALL:
call identifier '(' ARGLIST ')'
;
ARGLIST:
EXPR
| EXPR ',' ARGLIST
|
;
IF:
if EXPR BLOCK ELSE
;
ELSE:
else BLOCK
|
;
LET:
let identifier '=' EXPR ';'
| let identifier '=' CALL ';'
;
READ:
read identifier ';'
;
RETURN:
return EXPR ';'
;
WHILE:
while EXPR BLOCK
;
WRITE:
write EXPR ';'
;
EXPR:
number
| identifier
| '(' EXPR ')'
| '!' EXPR
| '~' EXPR
| EXPR '+' EXPR
| EXPR '-' EXPR
| EXPR '*' EXPR
| EXPR '/' EXPR
| EXPR '%' EXPR
| EXPR '&' EXPR
| EXPR '|' EXPR
| EXPR '<' EXPR
| EXPR '>' EXPR
| EXPR "<=" EXPR
| EXPR ">=" EXPR
| EXPR "==" EXPR
| EXPR "!=" EXPR
;
%%
int yyerror(String s) {
System.err.println("error: " + s);
}
Bison doesn't allow you to declare quoted token names (such as "(") with the %token declaration. It knows they are tokens; they cannot be anything else.
You use the %token declaration to declare symbolic names for tokens, which you will find useful when writing your lexer. In the declaration, the symbolic name comes first, optionally followed by the double-quoted alias. You can repeat that as often as you like. For example, you could write:
%token TK_LE "<=" TK_GE ">="
You can then use either the symbolic name or the alias in your grammar, but using the alias makes your grammar more readable. Also, Bison uses the alias when constructing error messages, which is a good thing since "expecting TK_SEMIC" is not a great way to communicate with a user that a ";" was required.
Keep in mind that a single-quoted single character token, such as '(', is not the same token as the double-quoted alias. In your grammar, you use '(' but attempt to declare "(". Had you succeeded in declaring "(", you would have gotten an "unused token" warning. Since '(' doesn't require a symbolic name, you can just remove the declaration. You will only need them for multicharacter tokens like "<=". (Note that spaces are significant inside quotes. " <= " is not the same as "<=".)
Symbolic token names are used as Java values, so their names cannot conflict with variables or Java keywords. You cannot, for example, use break as a symbolic token name. Trying to do so will cause compilation errors.
For this reason, it's customary to write token names in ALL_CAPS, and non-terminals in lower case. Non-terminals names are not used in the generated code, so you can use whatever names you wish.
You reverse this convention, which will cause a variety of errors when you compile the generated parser, and which is hard to read for those of us accustomed to the standard style.
A couple of other notes:
The bison Java interface does not use a %union declaration. The %type declarations are sufficient.
You are missing precedence declarations for many operators, particularly comparison operators. That will lead to a large number of parser conflicts. Make sure you write the precedence levels in the correct order.

Antlr grun error - no viable alternative input at

I'm trying to write a grammar for Prolog interpreter. When I run grun from command line on input like "father(john,mary).", I get a message saying "no viable input at 'father(john,'" and I don't know why. I've tried rearranging rules in my grammar, used different entry points etc., but still get the same error. I'm not even sure if it's caused by my grammar or something else like antlr itself. Can someone point out what is wrong with my grammar or think of what could be the cause if not the grammar?
The commands I ran are:
antlr4 -no-listener -visitor Expr.g4
javac *.java
grun antlr.Expr start tests/test.txt -gui
And this is the resulting parse tree:
Here is my grammar:
grammar Expr;
#header{
package antlr;
}
//start rule
start : (program | query) EOF
;
program : (rule_ '.')*
;
query : conjunction '?'
;
rule_ : compound
| compound ':-' conjunction
;
conjunction : compound
| compound ',' conjunction
;
compound : Atom '(' elements ')'
| '.(' elements ')'
;
list : '[]'
| '[' element ']'
| '[' elements ']'
;
element : Term
| list
| compound
;
elements : element
| element ',' elements
;
WS : [ \t\r\n]+ -> skip ;
Atom : [a-z]([a-z]|[A-Z]|[0-9]|'_')*
| '0'
;
Var : [A-Z]([a-z]|[A-Z]|[0-9]|'_')*
;
Term : Atom
| Var
;
The lexer will always produce the same tokens for any input. The lexer does not "listen" to what the parser is trying to match. The rules the lexer applies are quite simple:
try to match as many characters as possible
when 2 or more lexer rules match the same amount of characters, let the rule defined first "win"
Because of the 2nd rule, the rule Term will never be matched. And moving the Term rule above Var and Atom will cause the latter rules to be never matched. The solution: "promote" the Term rule to a parser rule:
start : (program | query) EOF
;
program : (rule_ '.')*
;
query : conjunction '?'
;
rule_ : compound (':-' conjunction)?
;
conjunction : compound (',' conjunction)?
;
compound : Atom '(' elements ')'
| '.' '(' elements ')'
;
list : '[' elements? ']'
;
element : term
| list
| compound
;
elements : element (',' element)*
;
term : Atom
| Var
;
WS : [ \t\r\n]+ -> skip ;
Atom : [a-z] [a-zA-Z0-9_]*
| '0'
;
Var : [A-Z] [a-zA-Z0-9_]*
;

ANTLR Token recognition error with lexer and parser

I am writing an ANTLR Lexer and Parser grammar that will parse text that is quite similar to a Java class. Eventually it will parse text like the following:
reference schema:"https://schema.org/";
reference dc:"https://www.dublincore.org/";
type dc:Author {
}
I am building up the Lexer and Parser slowly. I have successfully managed to parse the references but have hit a wall when parsing the type.
Before adding support for the type I was able to use string literals for space, colon, and semi-colon in the parser but after I encountered cannot create implicit token for string literal errors. I defined a lexer rule for each of those characters and replaced all occurrences of the literal with the rule. However this broke the parsing of references.
I have included my lexer and parser that successfully parses references below (along with a sample input and the parsed abstract syntax tree) and the evolved versions which isn't working. I am not getting any compilation errors but plenty of token recognition errors (screenshot included below).
What is the correct way to handle the parsing?
Working
Lexer
lexer grammar WorkingLexerGrammar;
WS: ('\t' | '\n' | '\r' )+ -> skip ;
fragment Colon : ':';
fragment SemiColon: ';';
fragment Underscores: '_'+ ;
fragment Digits: [0-9]+ ;
fragment LowercaseLetters: [a-z]+ ;
fragment UppercaseLetters: [A-Z]+ ;
fragment String: '"' .*? '"' ;
fragment Prefix: (Underscores | Digits | LowercaseLetters)+ ;
REFERENCE_KEYWORD: 'reference' ;
TYPE_KEYWORD: 'type' ;
PREFIXED_REFERENCE: ' ' -> pushMode(PrefixedReferenceMode) ;
mode PrefixedReferenceMode;
REFERENCE_PREFIX: Prefix;
REFERENCE_PREFIX_SEPARATOR: ':' -> pushMode(IriMode);
END_IRI: ';' -> popMode;
mode IriMode;
IRI: String -> popMode;
Parser
parser grammar WorkingParserGrammar ;
options { tokenVocab=WorkingLexerGrammar; }
document: reference* EOF ;
prefixedReference: REFERENCE_PREFIX ':' IRI;
reference: REFERENCE_KEYWORD ' ' prefixedReference ';';
Input
reference schema:"https://schema.org/";
reference dc:"https://www.dublincore.org/";
Output
Evolved (not working)
Lexer
lexer grammar NotWorkingLexerGrammar;
WS: ('\t' | '\n' | '\r' )+ -> skip ;
fragment Colon : ':';
fragment SemiColon: ';';
fragment Underscores: '_'+ ;
fragment Digits: [0-9]+ ;
fragment LowercaseLetters: [a-z]+ ;
fragment UppercaseLetters: [A-Z]+ ;
fragment String: '"' .*? '"' ;
fragment Prefix: (Underscores | Digits | LowercaseLetters)+ ;
COLON: Colon;
SEMICOLON: SemiColon;
SPACE: ' ';
REFERENCE_KEYWORD: 'reference' ;
TYPE_KEYWORD: 'type' ;
PREFIXED_REFERENCE: SPACE -> pushMode(PrefixedReferenceMode) ;
mode PrefixedReferenceMode;
REFERENCE_PREFIX: Prefix;
REFERENCE_PREFIX_SEPARATOR: COLON -> pushMode(IriMode);
END_IRI: SEMICOLON -> popMode;
mode IriMode;
IRI: String -> popMode;
PREFIXED_NAME: SPACE -> pushMode(PrefixedNameMode) ;
mode PrefixedNameMode;
NAME_PREFIX: Prefix;
NAME_PREFIX_SEPARATOR: COLON -> pushMode(LocalNameMode);
END_NAME: SEMICOLON -> popMode;
mode LocalNameMode;
LOCAL_NAME: (Underscores | Digits | LowercaseLetters | UppercaseLetters)+ -> popMode;
Parser
parser grammar NotWorkingParserGrammar ;
options { tokenVocab=NotWorkingLexerGrammar; }
document: reference* type* EOF ;
prefixedReference: REFERENCE_PREFIX COLON IRI;
reference: REFERENCE_KEYWORD SPACE prefixedReference SEMICOLON;
prefixedName: NAME_PREFIX SPACE LOCAL_NAME;
type: TYPE_KEYWORD SPACE prefixedName;
Output
Following Bart Kiers' help I have made two updates to the lexer and parser grammars with varying success.
First update
This change parses the type definition correctly but only if I remove the lexer rules for reference. I think the reason for that is that the two rules are the same (i.e. PREFIXED_REFERENCE: SPACE -> pushMode(PrefixedReferenceMode) ; for reference and PREFIXED_NAME: SPACE -> pushMode(PrefixedNameMode) ; for type) – that is they both match on a space. My second update attempts to fix this but the full lexer and parser grammars are below.
Lexer
lexer grammar NotWorkingLexerGrammar;
WS: ('\t' | '\n' | '\r' )+ -> skip ;
fragment Underscores: '_'+ ;
fragment Digits: [0-9]+ ;
fragment LowercaseLetters: [a-z]+ ;
fragment UppercaseLetters: [A-Z]+ ;
fragment String: '"' .*? '"' ;
fragment Prefix: (Underscores | Digits | LowercaseLetters)+ ;
fragment COLON: ':';
fragment SEMICOLON: ';';
fragment SPACE: ' ';
fragment REFERENCE_KEYWORD: 'reference' ;
fragment TYPE_KEYWORD: 'type' ;
PREFIXED_REFERENCE: SPACE -> pushMode(PrefixedReferenceMode) ;
mode PrefixedReferenceMode;
REFERENCE_PREFIX: Prefix;
REFERENCE_PREFIX_SEPARATOR: COLON -> pushMode(IriMode);
END_IRI: SEMICOLON -> popMode;
mode IriMode;
IRI: String -> popMode;
PREFIXED_NAME: SPACE -> pushMode(PrefixedNameMode) ;
mode PrefixedNameMode;
NAME_PREFIX: Prefix;
NAME_PREFIX_SEPARATOR: COLON -> pushMode(LocalNameMode);
END_NAME: SEMICOLON -> popMode;
mode LocalNameMode;
LOCAL_NAME: (Underscores | Digits | LowercaseLetters | UppercaseLetters)+ -> popMode;
Parser
parser grammar NotWorkingParserGrammar ;
options { tokenVocab=NotWorkingLexerGrammar; }
document: reference* type* EOF ;
prefixedReference: REFERENCE_PREFIX REFERENCE_PREFIX_SEPARATOR IRI;
reference: REFERENCE_KEYWORD PREFIXED_REFERENCE prefixedReference END_IRI;
prefixedName: NAME_PREFIX NAME_PREFIX_SEPARATOR LOCAL_NAME;
type: TYPE_KEYWORD PREFIXED_NAME prefixedName END_NAME;
Second update
In an attempt to fix this I moved the reference and type keywords to the Lexer rules for the corresponding parts but this only parses the type if I remove all of the Lexer rules for reference. However references are parsed correctly.
Lexer
lexer grammar NotWorkingLexerGrammar;
WS: ('\t' | '\n' | '\r' )+ -> skip ;
fragment Underscores: '_'+ ;
fragment Digits: [0-9]+ ;
fragment LowercaseLetters: [a-z]+ ;
fragment UppercaseLetters: [A-Z]+ ;
fragment String: '"' .*? '"' ;
fragment Prefix: (Underscores | Digits | LowercaseLetters)+ ;
fragment COLON: ':';
fragment SEMICOLON: ';';
fragment SPACE: ' ';
fragment REFERENCE_KEYWORD: 'reference' ;
fragment TYPE_KEYWORD: 'type' ;
PREFIXED_REFERENCE: REFERENCE_KEYWORD SPACE -> pushMode(PrefixedReferenceMode) ;
mode PrefixedReferenceMode;
REFERENCE_PREFIX: Prefix;
REFERENCE_PREFIX_SEPARATOR: COLON -> pushMode(IriMode);
END_IRI: SEMICOLON -> popMode;
mode IriMode;
IRI: String -> popMode;
TYPE_DEFINITION: TYPE_KEYWORD SPACE -> pushMode(PrefixedNameMode) ;
mode PrefixedNameMode;
NAME_PREFIX: Prefix;
NAME_PREFIX_SEPARATOR: COLON -> pushMode(LocalNameMode);
END_NAME: SEMICOLON -> popMode;
mode LocalNameMode;
LOCAL_NAME: (Underscores | Digits | LowercaseLetters | UppercaseLetters)+ -> popMode;
Parser
parser grammar NotWorkingParserGrammar ;
options { tokenVocab=NotWorkingLexerGrammar; }
document: reference* type* EOF ;
prefixedReference: REFERENCE_PREFIX REFERENCE_PREFIX_SEPARATOR IRI;
reference: PREFIXED_REFERENCE prefixedReference END_IRI;
prefixedName: NAME_PREFIX NAME_PREFIX_SEPARATOR LOCAL_NAME;
type: TYPE_DEFINITION prefixedName END_NAME;
Output
For the following input:
reference schema:"https://schema.org/";
reference dc:"https://www.dublincore.org/";
type dc:Author;
This is the output:
line 4:0 token recognition error at: 't'
line 4:1 token recognition error at: 'y'
line 4:2 token recognition error at: 'p'
line 4:3 token recognition error at: 'e'
line 4:4 token recognition error at: ' '
line 4:5 token recognition error at: 'd'
line 4:6 token recognition error at: 'c'
line 4:7 token recognition error at: ':'
line 4:8 token recognition error at: 'A'
line 4:9 token recognition error at: 'u'
line 4:10 token recognition error at: 't'
line 4:11 token recognition error at: 'h'
line 4:12 token recognition error at: 'o'
line 4:13 token recognition error at: 'r;'
My reasoning for using modes is to limit the scope of rules. This is a language I control but would prefer not to change it dramatically. There is much more to the language than I've shown here and we have already have a grammar (currently a combined grammar) but it is quite brittle. I tried to make a change to prevent uppercase characters in prefixes but permit them in the local name but this snowballed and other rules started applying. Research suggested that modes was an approach to handle this situation but I'm not very familiar with ANTLR so I've possibly misunderstood it.
When encountering errors/warnings like these:
line 4:0 token recognition error at: 't'
line 4:1 token recognition error at: 'y'
line 4:2 token recognition error at: 'p'
line 4:3 token recognition error at: 'e'
...
it means that the lexer cannot construct a token for the input (type ... in this case). In your case, it means the lexer cannot create a token from the input in the mode it at that moment is in.
I tried to make a change to prevent uppercase characters in prefixes but permit them in the local name but this snowballed and other rules started applying
There are two options to resolve such things:
just parse prefixes like any ordinary identifier (upper or lower cased) and after parsing, walk the generated parse tree and validate that the prefix-identifiers are really lower cased using an ANTLR visitor or listener (see: https://github.com/antlr/antlr4/blob/master/doc/listeners.md)
make a distinction in your lexer between lower- and upper cased identifiers and use them accordingly in your parser rules, something like this could work:
document
: reference* type* EOF
;
reference
: K_REFERENCE LOWER_ID COL STRING SCOL
;
type
: K_TYPE LOWER_ID COL id OPAR CPAR
;
id
: LOWER_ID
| ID
;
K_REFERENCE : 'reference';
K_TYPE : 'type';
LOWER_ID : [a-z_] [a-z_0-9]*;
ID : [a-zA-Z_] [a-zA-Z_0-9]*;
STRING : '"' ~["]* '"';
SCOL : ';';
COL : ':';
OPAR : '{';
CPAR : '}';
SPACES : [ \t\r\n] -> skip;
Modes are meant to be used for input that really are 2 (or more) languages embedded in each other. For example parsing HTML files: there is content (text) and tags with attributes. From what I see, you're not using it as it is meant to be used, IMO.

ANTLR4 parser rules with other parser rules as arguments (meta-rules)

I would like to be able to write a "meta-rule" in ANTLR4 that takes a rule as an input argument and performs a set modification to that rule. Here's an example grammar:
grammar G;
WS: [ \t\n\r] + -> skip;
CHAR: [a-z];
term: (CHAR)+;
sum: term ('+' term)+;
pterm: '(' term ')' | '(' pterm ')';
psum: '(' sum ')' | '(' psum ')';
expr: term | sum | pterm | psum;
The rules for pterm and psum perform the same action on term and sum, enclosing them in possibly nested parentheses. I would like to be able to replace the last three lines above with something like the following:
enclose[rule]: '(' rule ')' | '(' enclose(rule) ')';
expr: term | sum | enclose(term) | enclose(sum);
Is there a way to construct a meta-rule like this?
The short answer is, no.
Better to resolve by refactoring the grammar and identifying the structurally significant terms:
expr: LPAREN sum RPAREN | LPAREN expr RPAREN ;
sum : term ('+' term)* ; // changed to Kleene star
term: CHAR+ ;
LPAREN : '(' ;
RPAREN : ')' ;
CHAR : [a-z] ;
WS : [ \t\n\r]+ -> skip ;
The sum rule will consume all terms, so the expr rule only needs to handle sums.

ANTLR v4 different tokens for the same symbols

How can I recognize different tokens for the same symbol in ANTLR v4? For example, in selected = $("library[title='compiler'] isbn"); the first = is an assignment, whereas the second = is an operator.
Here are the relevant lexer rules:
EQUALS
:
'='
;
OP
:
'|='
| '*='
| '~='
| '$='
| '='
| '!='
| '^='
;
And here is the parser rule for that line:
assign
:
ID EQUALS DOLLAR OPEN_PARENTHESIS QUOTES ID selector ID QUOTES
CLOSE_PARENTHESIS SEMICOLON
;
selector
:
OPEN_BRACKET ID OP APOSTROPHE ID APOSTROPHE CLOSE_BRACKET
;
This correctly parses the line, as long as I use an OP different than =.
Here is the error log:
JjQueryParser::init:34:29: mismatched input '=' expecting OP
JjQueryParser::init:34:39: mismatched input ''' expecting '\"'
JjQueryParser::init:34:46: mismatched input '"' expecting '='
The problem cannot be solved in the lexer, since the lexer does always return one token type for the same string. But it would be quite easy to resolve it in the parser. Just rewrite the rules lower case:
equals
: '='
;
op
:'|='
| '*='
| '~='
| '$='
| '='
| '!='
| '^='
;
I had the same issue. Resolved in the lexer as follows:
EQUALS: '=';
OP : '|' EQUALS
| '*' EQUALS
| '~' EQUALS
| '$' EQUALS
| '!' EQUALS
| '^' EQUALS
;
This guarantees that the symbol '=' is represented by a single token all the way. Don't forget to update the relevant rule as follows:
selector
:
OPEN_BRACKET ID (OP|EQUALS) APOSTROPHE ID APOSTROPHE CLOSE_BRACKET
;

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