loislo / bison-lalr1.js

JavaScript skeleton for Bison GNU Parser Generator

Example first

Open calculator.js in editor, see the bison parser beauty, then run:

v8 calculator.js

it calculates the result of the expression (-(2+2*2)/1)*-7 and outputs:

Parsed OK.
Answer is 42

Source of calculator.js is in calculator.y (lexer is at the bottom).

lalr1.js

JavaScript skeleton for Bison GNU Parser Generator.

Allows easily port any grammars from other languages to JavaScript. As it is just a Bison with a different target platform, lalr1.js supports all the features of BNF syntax and Bison specific extensions. Also, Bison generates efficient tables which do fit v8 and js17 very tight. So expect good performance!

Please look at the produced code in calculator.js

P.S. If someone could port flex to JavaScript, there will be a full professional stack for creating parsers in pure JavaScript.

Prerequisites

bison (version 2.7+), make, and cpp (The C Preprocessor, not the C++ compiler).

On my system their versions look like this:

$ bison --version

bison (GNU Bison) 2.7.12-4996
Written by Robert Corbett and Richard Stallman.

Copyright (C) 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

$ make --version

GNU Make 3.81
Copyright (C) 2006  Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

This program built for i386-apple-darwin11.3.0

$ cpp --version

i686-apple-darwin11-llvm-gcc-4.2 (GCC) 4.2.1 (Based on Apple Inc. build 5658) (LLVM build 2336.11.00)
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

$ man cpp gives this:

[…]
The C preprocessor, often known as cpp, is a macro processor that is used automatically by the C compiler to transform your program before compilation.
[…]

Almost every thing came from GNU. Kudos!

Test

make calculator

then:

d8 calculator.js

outputs:

Parsed OK.
Answer is 42

which is good :)

If your sustem doesn't build d8 you may replace it with just v8, but it gives sligtly different output.

If you want to trace all the state transitions run make calculator-debug in the first step. Then run d8 calculator.js to see something like this:

Starting parse
Entering state 0
Reading a token: Next token is token '(' ("(")
Shifting token '(' ("(")
Entering state 5

…

Entering state 11
Reducing stack by rule 1 (line 26):
   $1 = nterm e (-7)
   $2 = token tEND ("")
-> $$ = nterm expressions (-7)
Stack now 0
Entering state 6
Reading a token: Now at end of input.
Shifting token $end ("")
Entering state 10
Parsed OK.
Answer is 42

which is good too :)

The calcolator.y example has a built-in lexer emulator with a simple token stream for the ((3+2*3)*1)/-3 expression. In ruby-parser.js project you can find a full featured parser build with lalr1.js.

Thanks to jison project for the example and the inspiration!

Features

The main and only feature is that this skeleton does its job exactly the same way the original C and Java skeletons do.

In debug mode (cpp -DYYDEBUG …) the resulting parser produces exactly the same debug output (excepting memory management entries), state transitions and even states and token numbers as the yacc.c skeleton does. This gives a handy way of testing your ported parser just by comparing the original and ported parsers output with diff. In ruby parser project both parsers produce bit-to-bit equal output on complex ruby source of 48,000 lines.