No inline actions¶
In Grammar is code we have mentioned that many compiler-compilers reuse the Yacc invention “actions”. And we hinted already that Castle prefers an alternative.
Let’s see why the old concept is outdated … And what is easier to use.
Actions, in retrospect¶
When parsing an input with the aspiration to verify the input does matches the grammar only; a result as \(True\) or
\(False\) will do. Commonly this is not our goal; we want to act on the input. Or at least read the content.
Yacc invented actions: embedded (C-) code-fragments that are copied into the generated parser. When the parser
reached that point the code as executed. You could anything you like: Build a parse-tree, or directly act on the
(partially) parsed input [1].
It was great (back then). Many, also the more modern, parser-generators use inline-actions – with the drawback that it makes the grammer harder to read. In spite of the popularity of actions, I think we can do better, as lot has happend since then. Most important: parsing-algorithms become a lot smarter. Yacc used a simple LALR(1) pattern; with only 1 token lookahead. That allowed us to execute an action as soon a the input was read upto that point. Without backtracking and other “considere alternatives”, that execution is always deterministic.
Ambiguity¶
With “backtracking” (and other smartness) this has chanced. Both the compiler-compiler and the resulting parsers have to consider multiple ways on how to read the input. And may reconsider many tokens and lines later on how to parse a (earlier) line. When execution actions “in-line”, the can become executed many times – which probably isn’t what was ment when specifying the grammer.
Many strategies exist to solve this ambiguity. Some tools demand that each action have no side-effects. When a
pure-functions (as the are called) many times, the deliver exactly the same result, every time. So the issue is gone;
albeit it limits you in what your actions can do – strictly speaking even printing a debug message is not allowed.
Others use this effect and cache the first result and reuse the next time(s). Again it works, but it limits on what
actions can do!
A tools may also postpone all actions until the parser is confident on how to read (parse) the input – often when all
input is read. Again it works, unless you expected (debug) output on the fly.
In short: inline-actions have become more restricted and less useful when parser become smarter. Without solving the need for maintainable grammers.
Memory¶
Once memory was very restricted; a compiler-compiler that only needed a single token-lookahead was using not more memory then needed. When needed, the programmer could use inline-actions to build the “parse-tree” on the fly. This has become the standard. During parsing one builds a tree: a parse-tree. And often we postproces it afterwards [1].
As modern tools need to (be able to) read the whole input anyhow to be able parse it, and the memory-issues is solved [2], the need to process “actions” inline is gone. But we need a design to act in the input!
Visitors¶
The de-facto solution is vistitors. Remember, back-them the Visitor Pattern wasn’t invented yet! But now visitors are very popular to separates algorithms and data. We like to build the “parse-tree” in one component first and, act on it with visitors (and friend) later; possible in another component.
Hint
Visitors & friends
There are many kinds of visitors; most (sub)patterns are very interwoven with the language that is used – although many programming-language do no have “build in” support for this pattern. It the developer who has to write all.
In classic OO-languages, one write specially named methods in a class. That are called using single (or double) dispatch; to handle the data-object ‘D’ the method visit_D() is called “automagically”. And for a subclass ‘S’ one has to implement visit_S() – even when it should do exactly the same as visit_D(); no inheritance here.
Other languages, like CSS, use visitors slightly differently. Here “selectors” are use to select a part of a tree on which a scripts-alike
“declaration” will act. One can even select multiple parts; the system will interate over them automatically.
Also XLST uses this approach; here XPATH expressions are used to select the data.
This kind of visitor needs language-support: to be able to separate which data is to be pick and which actions has to
be performed on all found parts.
Most likely there are even more variants of this pattern (and even within the OO-languages, various version
exist). For me, and for now, it are all “visitors (or friends)”.
Castle will have a more advanced version; as it should be easy for developer (and hard to make mistakes).
Castle Has build-in visitors¶
The traditional inline actions, as one invented by Yacc, are outdated as the complicate the grammer, modern parser-strategies need to read all input anyhow and we aren’t that restricted in memory anymore. So, an alternative that make the code better maintainable is to be preferred. Tip It does not imply Castle (or a future version) is not allowed to support inline-actions Grammer-tules are just functions; so why not allow pseudo-rules, that act as inline-actions, but are just regular functions (with the same signature) |
Footnotes