ML-Yacc User`s Manual Version 2.4
Contents
1. a stream val cons a a stream gt a stream val get a stream gt a a stream end 6 2 Using the parser structure The parser structure converts the lexing function produced by ML Lex into a function which creates a lazy stream of tokens The function makeLexer takes the same values as the corresponding makeLexer created by ML Lex but returns a stream of tokens instead of a function which yields tokens The function parse takes the token stream and some other arguments that are described below and parses the token stream It returns a pair composed of the value associated with the start symbol and the rest of the token stream The rest of the token stream includes the end of parse symbol which caused the reduction of some rule to the start symbol The function parse raises the exception ParseError if a syntax error occurs which it cannot fix The lazy stream is implemented by the Stream structure The function streamify converts a conventional implementation of a stream into a lazy 19 stream In a conventional implementation of a stream a stream consists of a position in a list of values Fetching a value from a stream returns the value associated with the position and updates the position to the next element in the list of values The fetch is a side effecting operation In a lazy stream a fetch returns a value and a new stream without a side effect which updates the position value This means that a stream can2. symbol subst list subst list symbol for symbol cmd arg Any ML pattern ML type heop symbol list header code keyword symbol list left symbol list name identifier nodefault nonassoc symbol list nonterm symbol type list noshift symbol list pos ML type prefer symbol list pure right symbol list start symbol subst subst list term symbol type list value symbol code verbose cmd list cmd list cmd cmd rule prec prec symbol clause list symbol list rule prec code clause list symbol list rule prec code rule symbol clause list rule list rule list rule rule 2 3 Required ML Yacc Declarations name You must specify the name of the parser with name name nonterm and term You must define the terminal and nonterminal sets using the term and nonterm declarations respectively These declarations are like an ML datatype definition The type of the value that a symbol may carry is defined at the same time that the symbol is defined Each declarations consists of the keyword term or nonterm followed by a list of symbol entries separated by a bar Each symbol entry is a symbol name followed by an optional of lt ML type gt The types cannot be polymorphic Those symbol entries without a type carry no value Nonterminal and terminal names must be disjoint and no name may be declared more than once in either declaration The symbol n
3. Lex and ML Yacc In ML Lex semantic actions must be followed by a semicolon but in ML Yacc semantic actions cannot be followed by a semicolon The syntax should be the same ML Lex also produces structures with two different signatures but it should produce structures with just one signature This would simplify some things References 1 A Practical Method for LR and LL Syntactic Error Diagnosis and Recov ery M Burke and G Fisher ACM Transactions on Programming Lan guages and Systems Vol 9 No 2 April 1987 pp 164 167 2 A Aho R Sethi J Ullman Compilers Principles Techniques and Tools Addison Wesley Reading MA 1986 33
4. ML Yacc delays the evaluation of semantic actions until the completion of a successful parse This ensures that there will be no semantic actions to undo if a syntactic error correction invalidates some semantic actions If however the semantic actions are free of significant side effects and always terminate the results of semantic actions that are invalidated by a syntactic error correction can always be safely ignored Parsers run faster and need less memory when it is not necessary to delay the evaluation of semantic actions You are encouraged to write semantic actions that are free of side effects and always terminate and to declare this information to ML Yacc A semantic action is free of significant side effects if it can be reexecuted a reasonably small number of times without affecting the result of a parse The reexecution occurs when the error correcting parser is testing possible corrections to fix a syntax error and the number of times reexecution occurs is roughly bounded for each syntax error by the number of terminals times the amount of lookahead permitted for the error correcting parser The rules section contains the context free grammar productions and their associated semantic actions 2 1 Lexical Definitions Comments have the same lexical definition as they do in Standard ML and can be placed anywhere in a specification All characters up to the first occurrence of a delimiting outside of a comment are pla
5. an argument This is often cleaner than using global reference variables The declaration arg Any ML pattern lt ML type gt specifies the argument to the parser as well as its type For example arg filename string If Zarg is not specified it defaults to unit and noshift You should specify the set of terminals that may follow the start symbol also called end of parse symbols using the eop declaration The eop keyword should be followed by the list of terminals This is useful for example in an interactive system where you want to force the evaluation of a statement before an end of file remember a parser delays the execution of semantic actions until a parse is successful ML Yacc has no concept of an end of file You must define an end of file terminal EOF perhaps in the term declaration You must declare terminals which cannot be shifted such as end of file in the noshift declaration The noshift keyword should be followed by the list of non shiftable terminals An error message will be printed if a non shiftable terminal is found on the right hand side of any rule but ML Yacc will not prevent you from using such grammars It is important to emphasize that non shiftable terminals must be declared The error correcting parser may attempt to read past such terminals while evaluating a correction to a syntax error otherwise This may confuse the lexer 11 header You may define code to head the
6. functor parser name LrValsFun here This may be useful for adding additonal parameter structures to the functor The functor must be parameterized by the Token structure so the declaration should always have the form header functor parser name LrValsFun structure Token TOKEN fod left right nonassoc You should list the precedence declarations in order of increasing tighter binding precedence Each precedence declaration consists of keyword specifying associativity followed by a list of termi nals The keywords are left right and nonassoc standing for their respective associativities nodefault The nodefault declaration suppresses the generation of default reductions If only one production can be reduced in a given state in an LR table it may be made the default action for the state An incorrect reduction will be caught later when the parser attempts to shift the looka head terminal which caused the reduction ML Yacc usually produces programs and verbose files with default reductions This saves a great deal of space in representing the LR tables but sometimes it is useful for debugging and advanced uses of the parser to suppress the generation of default reductions pure Include the pure declaration if the semantic actions are free of signifi cant side effects and always terminate start You may define the start symbol using the 4start declaration Other wise the nonterminal for the first rule will be used as t
7. just apply the appropriate token constructor function from this Tokens structure to a value if there is one and the line numbers This is exactly what you do in the lexer to construct tokens 31 Then you must place the dummy token on the front of your lex stream The structure n Parser contains a structure Stream which implements lazy streams So you just cons the dummy token on to stream returned by makeLexer 10 2 You may wish to functorize things even further Two possibilities are turning the lexer and parser structures into closed functors that is functors which do not refer to types or values defined outside their body or outside their parameter structures except for pervasive types and values and creating a functor which encapsulates the code necessary to invoke the parser Use the header declarations in ML Lex and ML Yacc to create closed func tors See section 2 4 of this manual and section 4 of the manual for ML Lex for complete descriptions of these declarations If you do this you should also parameterize these structures by the types of line numbers The type will be an abstract type so you will also need to define all the valid operations on the type The signature INTERFACE defined below shows one possible signature for a structure defining the line number type and associated operations If you wish to encapsulate the code necessary to invoke the parser your functor generally will have form Functorizing things f
8. pos declaration in an ML Yacc specification and defined in the user declarations section of the ML Lex specification The type result is the type associated with the start symbol in the ML Yacc specification 7 Examples See the directory examples for examples of parsers constructed using ML Yacc Here is a small sample parser and lexer for an interactive calculator from the directory examples calc along with code for creating a parsing function The calculator reads one or more expressions from the standard input evaluates the expressions and prints their values Expressions should be separated by semicolons and may also be ended by using an end of file This shows how to construct an interactive parser which reads a top level declaration and processes the declaration before reading the next top level declaration 20 7 1 Sample Grammar Sample interactive calculator for ML Yacc fun lookup bogus 10000 lookup s 0 hh heop EOF SEMI pos declares the type of positions for terminals Each symbol has an associated left and right position pos int left SUB PLUS left TIMES DIV right CARAT term ID of string NUM of int PLUS TIMES PRINT SEMI EOF CARAT DIV SUB nonterm EXP of int START of int option name Calc subst PRINT for ID prefer PLUS TIMES DIV SUB keyword PRINT SEMI noshift EOF value ID bogus nodefault verbose Ah the parser returns the value associate
9. terminal for terminal where items on the list are separated using a Substitution corrections on this list will be chosen over all other corrections except preferred insertion corrections listed above all other things being equal change This is a generalization of prefer and subst It takes a the following syntax tokensia gt tokensi tokenss gt tokensoy etc where each tokens is a possibly empty segence of tokens The idea is that any instance of tokensi can be corrected to tokens 1 and so on For example to suggest that a good error correction to try is IN ID END which is useful for the ML parser write change gt IN ID END value The error correction algorithm may also insert terminals with values You must supply a value for such a terminal The keyword should be followed by a terminal and a piece of code enclosed in parentheses that when evaluated supplies the value There must be a separate value declaration for each terminal with a value that you wish may be inserted or substituted in an error correction The code for the value is not evaluated until the parse is successful Do not specify a value for terminals without values This will result in a type error in the program produced by ML Yacc 2 6 Rules All rules are declared in the final section after the last delimiter A rule consists of a left hand side nonterminal followed by a colon followed by a list of right hand side claus
10. token x signature TOKEN sig structure LrTable LR_TABLE datatype a b token TOKEN of LrTable term Ca b b val sameToken a b token a b token gt bool end LR_PARSER signature for a polymorphic LR parser signature LR_PARSER sig structure Stream STREAM structure LrTable LR_TABLE structure Token TOKEN sharing LrTable Token LrTable exception ParseError val parse table LrTable table 25 lexer b c Token token Stream stream arg arg saction int e LrTable state b c c list arg gt LrTable nonterm Ob C Cc LrTable state b c c list void b ec is_keyword LrTable term gt bool noShift LrTable term gt bool preferred_subst LrTable term gt LrTable term list preferred_insert LrTable term gt bool errtermvalue LrTable term gt b showTerminal LrTable term gt string terms LrTable term list error string c c gt unit Fs lookahead int max amount of lookahead used in error correction gt bx b c Token token Stream stream end 8 2 Lexers Lexers for use with ML Yacc s output must match one of these signatures signature LEXER sig structure UserDeclarations sig type a b token type pos type svalue end val makeLexer int gt string gt unit gt UserDeclarations svalue UserDeclarations p
11. ML Yacc User s Manual Version 2 4 David R Tarditi Andrew W Appel Microsoft Research Department of Computer Science Princeton University Princeton NJ 08544 April 24 2000 c 1989 1990 1991 1994 Andrew W Appel David R Tarditi This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY It is subject only to the terms of the ML Yacc NOTICE LICENSE and DISCLAIMER in the file COPYRIGHT distributed with this software New in this version Improved error correction directive change that allows multi token insertions deletions substitutions Explanation of how to build a parser Section 5 and the Calc example Section 7 revised for SML NJ Version 110 and the use of CM Contents 1 Introduction Tl General pr o a A A et es eh a A 12 Modules eta ro a ee a ra la e 1 3 Error R GOVerV Men n wn rr A ere hoe ae td 14 Precedence 2 da buna usa SS SS SS SS R a Teh Notation iri ae u EE eae MR RE BE RR ie Be We 2 ML Yacc specifications 2 1 Lexical Definitions e 2 2 Grammar sarr Ob te AAA Se e ade HEA he AE ty 2 3 Required ML Yacc Declarations 2 4 Optional ML Yacc Declarations 2 5 Declarations for improving error recovery 236 Rules e altos abc als Bo AA tne bee BO eee eos ga 3 Producing files with ML Yacc 4 The lexical analyzer 5 Creating the parser 6 Using the parser 6 1 Parser Structure Signatures 1 2 o 6 2 Usin
12. able is a value The LR table structure defines an abstract LR table type 3An arbitrary number chosen because numbers above this do not seem to improve error correction much error detection because a syntax error is often not detected until several tokens beyond the token which caused the error The algorithm works by trying corrections at each of the 16 tokens up to and including the token at which the error was detected At each token in the input stream it will try deleting the token substituting other tokens for the token or inserting some other token before the token The algorithm uses a parse check to evaluate corrections A parse check is a check of how far a correction allows a parser to parse without encountering a syntax error You pass an upper bound on how many tokens beyond the error point a parser may read while doing a parse check as an argument to the parser This allows you to control the amount of lookahead that a parser reads for different kinds of systems For an interactive system you should set the lookahead to zero Otherwise a parser may hang waiting for input in the case of a syntax error If the lookahead is zero no syntax errors will be corrected For a batch system you should set the lookahead to 15 The algorithm selects the set of corrections which allows the parse to pro ceed the farthest and parse through at least the error token It then removes those corrections involving keywords which do not meet a long
13. al noShift LrTable term gt bool val preferred_subst LrTable term gt LrTable term list val preferred_insert LrTable term gt bool val errtermvalue LrTable term gt svalue val showTerminal LrTable term gt string val terms LrTable term list end table is the LR table for the parser val table LrTable table end ML Yacc generates these two signatures printed out in sig file created by parser generator signature n _TOKENS sig type a b token type svalue end signature n _LRVALS sig structure Tokens n _TOKENS structure ParserData PARSER_DATA sharing type ParserData Token token Tokens token sharing type ParserData svalue Tokens svalue end 28 8 4 User parser signatures Parsers created by applying the Join functor will match this signature signature PARSER sig structure Token TOKEN structure Stream STREAM exception ParseError type pos pos is the type of line numbers type result value returned by the parser type arg type of the user supplied argument type svalue the types of semantic values val makeLexer int gt string gt svalue pos Token token Stream stream val parse int svalue pos Token token Stream stream string pos pos gt unit arg gt result svalue pos Token token Stream stream val sameToken svalue pos Token token svalue pos Token token gt bool end Parsers created by applyi
14. ames and types are used to construct a datatype union for the values on the semantic stack in the LR parser and to name the values associated with subcomponents of a rule The names and types of terminals are also used to construct a signature for a structure that may be passed to the lexer functor Because the types and names are used in these manners do not use ML keywords as symbol names The programs produced by ML Yacc will not compile if ML keywords are used as symbol names Make sure that the types specified in the term declaration are fully qualified types or are available in the background environment when the signatures produced 10 pos 2 4 harg heop by ML Yacc are loaded Do not use any locally defined types from the user declarations section of the specification These requirements on the types in the term declaration are not a burden They force the types to be defined in another module which is a good idea since these types will be used in the lexer module You must declare the type of position values using the pos declaration The syntax is pos lt ML type gt This type MUST be the same type as that which is actually found in the lexer It cannot be polymorphic Optional ML Yacc Declarations You may want each invocation of the entire parser to be parameterized by a particular argument such as the file name of the input being parsed in an invocation of the parser The arg declaration allows you to specify such
15. be repeatedly re evaluated without affecting the values that it returns If f is the function that is passed to streamify f is called only as many times as necessary to construct the portion of the list of values that is actually used Parse also takes an integer giving the maximum amount of lookahead per mitted for the error correcting parse a function to print error messages and a value of type arg The maximum amount of lookahead for interactive systems should be zero In this case no attempt is made to correct any syntax errors For non interactive systems try 15 The function to print error messages takes a tuple of values consisting of the left and right positions of the terminal which caused the error and an error message If the Zarg declaration is not used the value of type arg should be a value of type unit The function sameToken can be used to see if two tokens denote the same terminal irregardless of any values that the tokens carry It is useful if you have multiple end of parse symbols and must check which end of parse symbol has been left on the front of the token stream The types have the following meanings The type arg is the type of the additional argument to the parser which is specified by the arg declaration in the ML Yacc specification The type lexarg is the optional argument to lexers and is specified by the arg declaration in an ML Lex specifcation The type pos is the type of line numbers and is specified by the
16. ced in the user declarations section After that the following words and symbols are reserved of for 4 gt 1 The following classes of ML symbols are used identifiers nonsymbolic ML identifiers which consist of an alpha betic character followed by one or more alphabetic characters numeric characters primes gt or underscores _ type variables nonsymbolic ML identifier starting with a prime uy integers one or more decimal digits qualified identifiers an identifer followed by a period The following classes of non ML symbols are used identifiers a percent sign followed by one or more lowercase alphabet letters The valid identifiers are farg eop header keyword left name nodefault jnonassoc nonterm jnoshift pos prec prefer pure right start subst term value verbose code This class is meant to hold ML code The ML code is not parsed for syntax errors It consists of a left parenthesis fol lowed by all characters up to a balancing right parenthesis Parentheses in ML comments and ML strings are excluded from the count of balancing parentheses 2 2 Grammar This is the grammar for specifications spec user declarations cmd list rule list ML type nonpolymorphic ML types see the Standard ML manual symbol identifier symbol list symbol list symbol symbol type list symbol type list symbol of ML type symbol type list symbol symbol of ML type
17. d with the expression START PRINT EXP print EXP print n flush_out std_out SOME EXP EXP SOME EXP NONE EXP NUM NUM 21 ID lookup ID EXP PLUS EXP EXP1 EXP2 EXP TIMES EXP EXP1 EXP2 EXP DIV EXP EXP1 div EXP2 EXP SUB EXP EXP1 EXP2 EXP CARAT EXP let fun e m 0 1 e m 1 mxe m 1 1 in e EXP1 EXP2 end 7 2 Sample Lexer structure Tokens Tokens type pos int type svalue Tokens svalue type a b token a b Tokens token type lexresult svalue pos token val pos ref 0 val eof fn gt Tokens EOF pos pos val error fn e l int _ gt output std_out line makestring 1 OE SUN hh header functor CalcLexFun structure Tokens Calc TOKENS alpha A Za z digit 0 9 ws Vd hh n gt pos pos 1 lex ws gt lex digit gt Tokens NUM revfold fn a r gt ord a ord 0 10 r explode yytext 0 pos pos 4 gt Tokens PLUS pos pos gn gt Tokens TIMES pos pos eat gt Tokens SEMI pos pos alpha gt if yytext print then Tokens PRINT pos pos else Tokens ID yytext pos pos nee gt Tokens SUB pos pos 22 HRZ gt Tokens CARAT pos pos yi gt Tokens DIV pos pos Me gt error ignoring bad character yytext pos pos lex 7 3 Top level code You must follow the instructions in Section 5 to create t
18. e arg declaration in ML Lex the defi nition of n Parser must be changed to use another functor called Join WithArg structure n Parser JoinWithArg structure ParserData n LrVals ParserData structure Lex n Lex structure LrParser LrParser The following outline summarizes this process available at top level TOKEN LR_TABLE STREAM LR_PARSER PARSER_DATA 16 structure LrParser LR_PARSER printed out in sig file created by parser generator signature n _TOKENS sig structure Token TOKEN type svalue val PLUS pos pos gt svalue pos Token token val INTLIT int pos pos gt svalue pos Token token end signature n _LRVALS sig structure Tokens n _TOKENS structure ParserData PARSER_DATA sharing ParserData Token Tokens Token sharing type ParserData svalue Tokens svalue end printed out by lexer generator functor n LexFun structure Tokens n _TOKENS struct end printed out in sml file created by parser generator functor n LrValsFun structure Token TOKENS struct structure ParserData struct structure Token Token code in header section of specification structure Header type svalue type result 17 type pos structure Actions structure EC val table end structure Tokens n _TOKENS struct structure Token ParserData Token type svalue fun PLUS p1 p2 id fun INTLIT i
19. en type lexresult svalue pos token These types are used to give lexers signatures You may use a lexer constructed using ML Lex with the arg declaration but you must follow special instructions for tying the parser and lexer together 5 Creating the parser Let the name of the grammar specification file be denoted by grammar and the name of the lexer specification file be denoted by lexer e g in our cal culator example these would stand for calc grm and calc lex respectively Let 15 the parser name in the specification be represented by n e g Calc in our calculator example To construct a parser do the following 1 In the appropriate CM description file e g for your main program or one of its subgroups or libraries include the lines ml yacc 1ib cm lexer grammar This will cause ML Yacc to be run on grammar producing source files grammar sig and grammar sml and ML Lex to be run on lexer producing a source file lexer sml Then these files will be compiled after loading the necessary signatures and modules from the ML Yacc library as specified by ml yacc lib cm 2 Apply functors to create the parser structure n LrVals n LrValsFun structure Token LrParser Token structure n Lex n LexFun structure Tokens n LrVals Tokens structure n Parser Join structure ParserData n LrVals ParserData structure Lex n Lex structure LrParser LrParser If the lexer was created using th
20. er minimum parse check If there is more than one correction possible after this it uses a simple heuristic priority scheme to order the corrections and then arbitrarily chooses one of the corrections with the highest priority You have some control over the priority scheme by being able to name a set of preferred insertions and a set of preferred substitutions The priorities for corrections ordered from highest to lowest priority are preferred insertions preferred substitutions insertions deletions and substitutions The error recovery algorithm is guaranteed to terminate since it always se lects fixes which parse through the error token The error correcting LR parser implements the algorithm by keeping a queue of its state stacks before shifting tokens and using a lazy stream for the lexer This makes it possible to restart the parse from before an error point and try various corrections The error correcting LR parser does not defer semantic ac tions Instead ML Yacc creates semantic actions which are free of side effects and always terminate ML Yacc uses higher order functions to defer the evalua tion of all user semantic actions until the parse is successfully completed without constructing an explicit parse tree You may declare whether your semantic ac tions are free of side effects and always terminate in which case ML Yacc does not need to defer the evaluation of your semantic actions 1 4 Precedence ML Yacc uses the same p
21. es 13 The right hand side clauses should be separated by bars Each clause consists of a list of nonterminal and terminal symbols followed by an optional prec declaration and then followed by the code to be evaluated when the rule is reduced The optional Zprec consists of the keyword prec followed by a terminal whose precedence should be used as the precedence of the rule The values of those symbols on the right hand side which have values are available inside the code Positions for all the symbols are also available Each value has the general form symbol name n 1 where n is the number of occurrences of the symbol to the left of the symbol If the symbol occurs only once in the rule symbol name may also be used The positions are given by symbol name n 1 left and symbol name n 1 right where n is defined as before The position for a null rhs of a production is assumed to be the leftmost position of the lookahead terminal which is causing the reduction This position value is available in defaultPos The value to which the code evaluates is used as the value of the nonterminal The type of the value and the nonterminal must match The value is ignored if the nonterminal has no value but is still evaluated for side effects 3 Producing files with ML Yacc ML Yacc may be used from the interactive system or built as a stand alone pro gram which may be run from the Unix command line See the file README in the m
22. etween a parser that it generates and a lexical analyzer that must be supplied by you It also uses the ML modules facility to factor out a set of modules that are common to every generated parser These common modules include a parsing structure which contains an error correcting LR parser an LR table structure and a structure which defines the representation of terminals ML Yacc produces a functor for a particular parser parameterized by the LR table structure and the representation of terminals This functor contains values specific to the parser such as the LR table for the parser the semantic actions for the parser and a structure containing the terminals for the parser ML Yacc produces a signature for the structure produced by applying this functor and another signature for the structure containing the terminals for the parser You must supply a functor for the lexing module parameterized this structure Figure 1 is a dependency diagram of the modules that summarizes this in formation A module at the head of an arrow is dependent on the module at the tail 1 3 Error Recovery The error recovery algorithm is able to accurately recover from many single token syntax errors It tries to make a single token correction at the token in the input stream at which the syntax error was detected and any of the 15 tokens before that token The algorithm checks corrections before the point of 1A plain LR parser is also available 2The LR t
23. g the parser structure 2 0 0 0 0 20000 7 Examples 7 1 Sample Grammar 7 2 Sample Leer aci e a BP Eb ee oe ee ny eo Topelevel code sy po ea o ek were eee eae Re 8 Signatures 8 1 Parsing structure signatures e 008 8 A MAER RA he A ERA hak ER E EE 8 3 Signatures for the functor produced by ML Yacc 8 4 User parser signatures ss ES en 9 Sharing constraints 10 Hints 10 1 Multiple start symbols o o e e aoa u eoa 10 2 Functorizing things further o a 11 Acknowledgements 13 13 14 17 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 23 25 26 28 29 30 30 31 32 12 Bugs 32 1 Introduction 1 1 General ML Yacc is a parser generator for Standard ML modeled after the Yacc parser generator It generates parsers for LALR languages like Yacc and has a simi lar syntax The generated parsers use a different algorithm for recovering from syntax errors than parsers generated by Yacc The algorithm is a partial im plementation of an algorithm described in 1 A parser tries to recover from a syntax error by making a single token insertion deletion or substitution near the point in the input stream at which the error was detected The parsers delay the evaluation of semantic actions until parses are completed successfully This makes it possible for parsers to recover from syntax errors that occur before the point of error detection but it does pre
24. he parser and lexer functors and load them After you have done this you must then apply the functors to produce the CalcParser structure The code for doing this is shown below structure CalcLrVals CalcLrValsFun structure Token LrParser Token structure CalcLex CalcLexFun structure Tokens CalcLrVals Tokens structure CalcParser Join structure LrParser LrParser structure ParserData CalcLrVals ParserData structure Lex CalcLex Now we need a function which given a lexer invokes the parser The function invoke does this fun invoke lexstream let fun print_error s i int _ Text LD output TextI0 std0ut Error line Int toString i s n in CalcParser parse 0 lexstream print_error end Finally we need a function which can read one or more expressions from the standard input The function parse shown below does this It runs the calcu lator on the standard input and terminates when an end of file is encountered fun parse let val lexer CalcParser makeLexer fn _ gt TextI0 inputLine TextI0 stdIn val dummyEOF CalcLrVals Tokens EOF 0 0 val dummySEMI CalcLrVals Tokens SEMI 0 0 fun loop lexer let val result lexer invoke lexer val nextToken lexer CalcParser Stream get lexer 23 in case result of SOME r gt Text10 output TextI0 std0ut result Int toString r n NONE gt if CalcParser sameToken nextToken dummyEOF then e
25. he start nonterminal The keyword start should be followed by the name of the starting non terminal This nonterminal should not be used on the right hand side of any rules to avoid conflicts between reducing to the start symbol and shifting a terminal ML Yacc will not prevent you from using such gram mars but it will print a warning message verbose Include the verbose declaration to produce a verbose description of the LALR parser The name of this file is the name of the specification file with a desc appended to it This file has the following format 1 A summary of errors found while generating the LALR tables 2 A detailed description of all errors 3 A description of the states of the parser Each state is preceded by a list of conflicts in the state 12 2 5 Declarations for improving error recovery These optional declarations improve error recovery keyword Specify all keywords in a grammar here The jkeyword should be fol lowed by a list of terminal names Fixes involving keywords are generally dangerous they are prone to substantially altering the syntactic meaning of the program They are subject to a more rigorous parse check than other fixes prefer List terminals to prefer for insertion after the prefer Corrections which insert a terminal on this list will be chosen over other corrections all other things being equal subst This declaration should be followed by a list of clauses of the form
26. lse loop lexer end in loop lexer end 8 Signatures This section contains signatures used by ML Yacc for structures in the file base sml functors and structures that it generates and for the signatures of lexer structures supplied by you 8 1 Parsing structure signatures STREAM signature for a lazy stream Signature STREAM sig type a stream val streamify unit gt a gt a stream val cons a a stream gt a stream val get a stream gt a a stream end LR_TABLE signature for an LR Table signature LR_TABLE sig datatype a b pairlist EMPTY PAIR of a b a b pairlist datatype state STATE of int datatype term T of int datatype nonterm NT of int datatype action SHIFT of state REDUCE of int ACCEPT ERROR 24 type table val numStates table gt int val numRules table gt int val describeActions table gt state gt term action pairlist action val describeGoto table gt state gt nonterm state pairlist val action table gt state term gt action val goto table gt state nonterm gt state val initialState table gt state exception Goto of state nonterm val mkLrTable actions term action pairlist action array gotos nonterm state pairlist array numStates int numRules int initialState state gt table end TOKEN signature for the internal structure of a
27. lyacc directory for directions on installing ML Yacc We recommend thaat ML Yacc be installed as a stand alone program If you are using the stand alone version of ML Yacc invoke the program sml yacc with the name of the specifcation file If you are using ML Yacc in the interactive system load the file smlyacc sml The end result is a structure ParseGen with one value parseGen in it Apply parseGen to a string containing the name of the specification file Two files will be created one named by attaching sig to the name of the specification the other named by attaching sml to the name of the specifi cation 4 The lexical analyzer Let the name for the parser given in the name declaration be denoted by n and the specification file name be denoted by spec name The parser genera tor creates a functor named n LrValsFun for the values needed for a particular parser This functor is placed in spec name sml This functor contains a structure Tokens which allows you to construct terminals from the appropriate values The structure has a function for each terminal that takes a tuple con 14 sisting of the value for the terminal if there is any a leftmost position for the terminal and a rightmost position for the terminal and constructs the terminal from these values A signature for the structure Tokens is created and placed in the sig file created by ML Yacc This signature is n TOKENS where n i
28. meta notation Text in a bold face typewriter font like this denotes text in a specification or ML code 2 ML Yacc specifications An ML Yacc specification consists of three parts each of which is separated from the others by a delimiter The general format is user declarations Ah ML Yacc declarations Ah rules You can define values available in the semantic actions of the rules in the user declarations section It is recommended that you keep the size of this section as small as possible and place large blocks of code in other modules The ML Yacc declarations section is used to make a set of required declara tions and a set of optional declarations You must declare the nonterminals and terminals and the types of the values associated with them there You must also name the parser and declare the type of position values You should specify the set of terminals which can follow the start symbol and the set of non shiftable terminals You may optionally declare precedences for terminals make decla rations that will improve error recovery and suppress the generation of default reductions in the parser You may declare whether the parser generator should create a verbose description of the parser in a desc file This is useful for finding the causes of shift reduce errors and other parsing conflicts You may also declare whether the semantic actions are free of significant side effects and always terminate Normally
29. ng the JoinWithArg functor will match this signature Signature ARG_PARSER sig structure Token TOKEN structure Stream STREAM exception ParseError type arg type lexarg type pos type result type svalue val makeLexer int gt string gt lexarg gt svalue pos Token token Stream stream val parse int svalue pos Token token Stream stream 29 9 string pos pos gt unit arg gt result svalue pos Token token Stream stream val sameToken svalue pos Token token svalue pos Token token gt bool end Sharing constraints Let the name of the parser be denoted by n If you have not created a lexer which takes an argument and you have followed the directions given earlier for creating the parser you will have the following structures with the following signatures always present signature TOKEN signature LR_TABLE signature STREAM signature LR_PARSER signature PARSER_DATA structure LrParser LR_PARSER signatures generated by ML Yacc signature n _TOKENS signature n _LRVALS structures created by you structure n LrVals n _LRVALS structure Lex LEXER structure n Parser PARSER The following sharing constraints will exist sharing n Parser Token LrParser Token n LrVals ParserData Token sharing n Parser Stream LrParser Stream sharing type n Parser arg n LrVals ParserData arg sharing type n Parser result n LrVals Parse
30. os UserDeclarations token end ARG_LEXER the arg option of ML Lex allows users to produce lexers which also take an argument before yielding a function from unit to a token 26 signature ARG_LEXER sig structure UserDeclarations sig type a b token type pos type svalue type arg end val makeLexer int gt string gt UserDeclarations arg gt unit gt UserDeclarations svalue UserDeclarations pos UserDeclarations token end 8 3 Signatures for the functor produced by ML Yacc The following signature is used in signatures generated by ML Yacc PARSER_DATA the signature of ParserData structures in n LrValsFun functor produced by ML Yacc All such structures match this signature Signature PARSER_DATA sig type pos the type of line numbers type svalue the type of semantic values type arg the type of the user supplied argument to the parser type result structure LrTable LR_TABLE structure Token TOKEN sharing Token LrTable LrTable structure Actions sig val actions int pos LrTable state svalue pos pos list arg gt LrTable nonterm svalue pos pos 27 LrTable state svalue pos pos list val void svalue val extract svalue gt result end structure EC contains information used to improve error recovery in an error correcting parser structure EC sig val is_keyword LrTable term gt bool v
31. pl p2 end end to be done by the user structure n LrVals n LrValsFun structure Token LrParser Token structure n Lex n LexFun structure Tokens n LrVals Tokens structure n Parser Join structure Lex n Lex structure ParserData n ParserData structure LrParser LrParser 6 Using the parser 6 1 Parser Structure Signatures The final structure created will have the signature PARSER Signature PARSER sig structure Token TOKEN structure Stream STREAM exception ParseError type pos pos is the type of line numbers type result value returned by the parser type arg type of the user supplied argument 18 type svalue the types of semantic values val makeLexer int gt string gt svalue pos Token token Stream stream val parse int svalue pos Token token Stream stream string pos pos gt unit arg gt result svalue pos Token token Stream stream val sameToken svalue pos Token token svalue pos Token token gt bool end or the signature ARG_PARSER if you used arg to create the lexer This signature differs from ARG PARSER in that it which has an additional type lexarg and a different type for makeLexer type lexarg val makeLexer int gt string gt lexarg gt svalue pos token stream The signature STREAM providing lazy streams is signature STREAM sig type a stream val streamify unit gt a gt
32. rData result sharing type n Parser pos n LrVals ParserData pos 30 Lex UserDeclarations pos sharing type n Parser svalue n LrVals ParserData svalue n LrVals Tokens svalue Lex UserDeclarations svalue sharing type n Parser Token token n LrVals ParserData Token token LrParser Token token Lex UserDeclarations token sharing n LrVals LrTable LrParser LrTable If you used a lexer which takes an argument then you will have structure ARG_LEXER structure n Parser PARSER additional sharing constraint sharing type n Parser lexarg Lex UserDeclarations arg 10 Hints 10 1 Multiple start symbols To have multiple start symbols define a dummy token for each start symbol Then define a start symbol which derives the multiple start symbols with dummy tokens placed in front of them When you start the parser you must place a dummy token on the front of the lexer stream to select a start symbol from which to begin parsing Assuming that you have followed the naming conventions used before create the lexer using the makeLexer function in the n Parser structure Then place the dummy token on the front of the lexer val dummyLexer n Parser Stream cons n LrVals Tokens dummy token name dummy lineno dummy lineno lexer You have to pass a Tokens structure to the lexer This Tokens structure contains functions which construct tokens from values and line numbers So to create your dummy token
33. recedence scheme as Yacc for resolving shift reduce conflicts Each terminal may be assigned a precedence and associativity Each 4An LR parser detects a syntax error as soon as possible but this does not necessarily mean that the token at which the error was detected caused the error rule is then assigned the precedence of its rightmost terminal If a shift reduce conflict occurs the conflict is resolved silently if the terminal and the rule in the conflict have precedences If the terminal has the higher precedence the shift is chosen If the rule has the higher precedence the reduction is chosen If both the terminal and the rule have the same precedence then the associativity of the terminal is used to resolve the conflict If the terminal is left associative the reduction is chosen If the terminal is right associative the shift is chosen Terminals may be declared to be nonassociative also in which case an error message is produced if the associativity is need to resolve the parsing conflict If a terminal or a rule in a shift reduce conflict does not have a precedence then an error message is produced and the shift is chosen In reduce reduce conflicts an error message is always produced and the first rule listed in the specification is chosen for reduction 1 5 Notation Text surrounded by brackets denotes meta notation If you see something like parser name you should substitute the actual name of your parser for the
34. s a parse tree ML Yacc uses an attribute grammar scheme with synthesized attributes Each symbol in the grammar may have a value i e attribute associated with it Each production has a semantic action associated with it A production with a semantic action is called a rule Parsers perform bottom up left to right evaluations of parse trees using semantic actions to compute values as they do so Given a production P A gt a the corresponding semantic action is used to compute a value for A from the values of the symbols in a If A has no value the semantic action is still evaluated but the value is ignored Each parse returns the value associated with the start symbol S of the grammar A parse returns a nullary value if the start symbol does not carry a value parsing structure gt values for a particular parser values for a particular parser lexical analyzer parsing structure gt particular parser values for a particular parser lexical analyzer Figure 1 Module Dependencies The synthesized attribute scheme can be adapted easily to inherited at tributes An inherited attribute is a value which propagates from a nonterminal to the symbols produced by the nonterminal according to some rule Since func tions are values in ML the semantic actions for the derived symbols can return functions which takes the inherited value as an argument 1 2 Modules ML Yacc uses the ML modules facility to specify the interface b
35. s the name given in the parser specification A signature in LRVALS is created for the structure produced by applying n LrValsFun Use the signature n TOKENS to create a functor for the lexical analyzer which takes the structure Tokens as an argument The signature n _TOKENS will not change unless the term declaration in a specification is altered by adding terminals or changing the types of terminals You do not need to re compile the lexical analyzer functor each time the specification for the parser is changed if the signature n TOKENS does not change If you are using ML Lex to create the lexical analyzer you can turn the lexer structure into a functor using the header declaration header allows the user to define the header for a structure body If the name of the parser in the specification were Calc you would add this declaration to the specification for the lexical analyzer x header functor CalcLexFun structure Tokens Calc_TOKENS You must define the following in the user definitions section type pos This is the type of position values for terminals This type must be the same as the one declared in the specification for the grammar Note however that this type is not available in the Tokens structure that parameterizes the lexer functor You must include the following code in the user definitions section of the ML Lex specification type svalue Tokens svalue type a b token a b Tokens tok
36. urther functor Encapsulate structure Parser structure Interface sharing type sharing type sharing type structure Tokens sharing type sharing type struct end PARSER INTERFACE Parser arg Interface arg Parser pos Interface pos Parser result parser name _TOKENS Tokens token Parser Token token Tokens svalue Parser svalue The signature INTERFACE defined below is a possible signature for a structure defining the types of line numbers and arguments types pos and arg respectively along with operations for them You need this structure because these types will be abstract types inside the body of your functor signature INTERFACE sig type pos val line pos ref val reset unit gt unit val next unit gt unit 32 val error string pos pos gt unit type arg val nothing arg end The directory example fol contains a sample parser in which the code for tying together the lexer and parser has been encapsulated in a functor 11 Acknowledgements Nick Rothwell wrote an SLR table generator in 1988 which inspired the initial work on an ML parser generator Bruce Duba and David MacQueen made useful suggestions about the design of the error correcting parser Thanks go to all the users at Carnegie Mellon who beta tested this version Their comments and questions led to the creation of this manual and helped improve it 12 Bugs There is a slight difference in syntax between ML
37. vent the parsers from affecting lexers in any significant way The parsers can insert tokens with values and substitute tokens with values for other tokens All symbols carry left and right position values which are available to semantic actions and are used in syntactic error messages ML Yacc uses context free grammars to specify the syntax of languages to be parsed See 2 for definitions and information on context free grammars and LR parsing We briefly review some terminology here A context free grammar is defined by a set of terminals T a set of nonterminals NT a set of productions P and a start nonterminal S Terminals are interchangeably referred to as tokens The terminal and nonterminal sets are assumed to be disjoint The set of symbols is the union of the nonterminal and terminal sets We use lower case Greek letters to denote a string of symbols We use upper case Roman letters near the beginning of the alphabet to denote nonterminals Each production gives a derivation of a string of symbols from a nonterminal which we will write as A gt a We define a relation between strings of symbols a and 8 written at 6 and read as a derives B if and only if a 6Ay 6 6 y and there exists some production A d We write the transitive closure of this relation as C We say that a string of terminals a is a valid sentence of the language i e it is derivable if the start symbol S F a The sequence of derivations is often visualized a
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