path: root/tcllib/modules/pt/pt_peg_language.man

[comment {-*- tcl -*- doctools manpage}]
[manpage_begin pt::peg_language n 1]
[include include/module.inc]
[titledesc {PEG Language Tutorial}]
[description]
[include include/ref_intro.inc]

Welcome to the tutorial / introduction for the
[sectref {PEG Specification Language}].

If you are already familiar with the language we are about to discuss,
and only wish to refresh your memory you can, of course, skip ahead to
the aforementioned section and just read the full formal specification.

[section {What is it?}]

[include include/format/whatis_peg.inc]

[section {The elements of the language}]
[subsection {Basic structure}]

The general outline of a textual PEG is

[example {
PEG <<name>> (<<start-expression>>)
   <<rules>>
END;
}]

[emph Note]: We are using text in double angle-brackets as
place-holders for things not yet explained.

[subsection Names]

Names are mostly used to identify the nonterminal symbols of the
grammar, i.e. that which occurs on the left-hand side of a <rule>.
The exception to that is the name given after the keyword [const PEG]
(see previous section), which is the name of the whole grammar itself.

[para]

The structure of a name is simple:

[list_begin enumerated]
[enum] It begins with a letter, underscore, or colon, followed by
[enum] zero or more letters, digits, underscores, or colons.
[list_end]

Or, in formal textual notation:

[example {
    ([_:] / <alpha>) ([_:] / <alnum>)*
}]

Examples of names:

[example {
    Hello
    ::world
    _:submarine55_
}]

Examples of text which are [emph not] names:

[example {
    12
    .bogus
    0wrong
    @location
}]

[subsection Rules]

The main body of the text of a grammar specification is taken up by
the rules. Each rule defines the sentence structure of one nonterminal
symbol. Their basic structure is

[example {
     <<name>>  <-  <<expression>> ;
}]

The <name> specifies the nonterminal symbol to be defined, the
<expression> after the arrow (<-) then declares its structure.

[para]

Note that each rule ends in a single semicolon, even the last.
I.e. the semicolon is a rule [emph terminator], not a separator.

[para]

We can have as many rules as we like, as long as we define each
nonterminal symbol at most once, and have at least one rule for each
nonterminal symbol which occured in an expression, i.e. in either the
start expression of the grammar, or the right-hande side of a rule.

[subsection Expressions]

The [emph parsing] expressions are the meat of any specification. They
declare the structure of the whole document (<<start-expression>>),
and of all nonterminal symbols.

[para]

All expressions are made up out of [term {atomic expressions}] and
[term operators] combining them. We have operators for choosing
between alternatives, repetition of parts, and for look-ahead
constraints. There is no explicit operator for the sequencing (also
known as [term concatenation]) of parts however. This is specified by
simply placing the parts adjacent to each other.

[para]

Here are the operators, from highest to lowest priority (i.e. strength
of binding):

[example {
    # Binary operators.

    <<expression-1>>     <<expression-2>>  # sequence. parse 1, then 2.
    <<expression-1>>  /  <<expression-2>>  # alternative. try to parse 1, and parse 2 if 1 failed to parse.

    # Prefix operators. Lookahead constraints. Same priority.

    & <<expression>>  # Parse expression, ok on successful parse.
    ! <<expression>>  # Ditto, except ok on failure to parse.

    # Suffix operators. Repetition. Same priority.

    <<expression>> ?  # Parse expression none, or once (repeat 0 or 1).
    <<expression>> *  # Parse expression zero or more times.
    <<expression>> +  # Parse expression one or more times.

    # Expression nesting

    ( <<expression>> ) # Put an expression in parens to change its priority.
}]

With this we can now deconstruct the formal expression for names given
in section [sectref Names]:

[example {
    ([_:] / <alpha>) ([_:] / <alnum>)*
}]

It is a sequence of two parts,
[example {    [_:] / <alpha> }]
and
[example {    ([_:] / <alnum>)* }]

The parentheses around the parts kept their inner alternatives bound
together against the normally higher priority of the sequence. Each of
the two parts is an alternative, with the second part additionally
repeated zero or more times, leaving us with the three atomic
expressions

[example {
    [_:]
    <alpha>
    <alnum>
}]

And [term {atomic expressions}] are our next topic. They
fall into three classes:

[list_begin enumerated]
[enum] names, i.e. nonterminal symbols,
[enum] string literals, and
[enum] character classes.
[list_end]

Names we know about already, or see section [sectref Names] for a
refresher.

[para]

String literals are simple. They are delimited by (i.e. start and end
with) either a single or double-apostroph, and in between the
delimiters we can have any character but the delimiter itself. They
can be empty as well. Examples of strings are

[example {
    ''
    ""
    'hello'
    "umbra"
    "'"
    '"'
}]

The last two examples show how to place any of the delimiters into a
string.

[para]

For the last, but not least of our atomic expressions, character
classes, we have a number of predefined classes, shown below, and the
ability to construct or own. The predefined classes are:

[example {
    <alnum>    # Any unicode alphabet or digit character (string is alnum).
    <alpha>    # Any unicode alphabet character (string is alpha).
    <ascii>    # Any unicode character below codepoint 0x80 (string is ascii).
    <control>  # Any unicode control character (string is control).
    <ddigit>   # The digit characters [0-9].
    <digit>    # Any unicode digit character (string is digit).
    <graph>    # Any unicode printing character, except space (string is graph).
    <lower>    # Any unicode lower-case alphabet character (string is lower).
    <print>    # Any unicode printing character, incl. space (string is print).
    <punct>    # Any unicode punctuation character (string is punct).
    <space>    # Any unicode space character (string is space).
    <upper>    # Any unicode upper-case alphabet character (string is upper).
    <wordchar> # Any unicode word character (string is wordchar).
    <xdigit>   # The hexadecimal digit characters [0-9a-fA-F].
    .          # Any character, except end of input.
}]

And the syntax of custom-defined character classes is

[example {
    [ <<range>>* ]
}]

where each range is either a single character, or of the form

[example {
   <<character>> - <character>>
}]

Examples for character classes we have seen already in the course of
this introduction are

[example {
    [_:]
    [0-9]
    [0-9a-fA-F]
}]

We are nearly done with expressions. The only piece left is to tell
how the characters in character classes and string literals are
specified.

[para]

Basically characters in the input stand for themselves, and in
addition to that we several types of escape syntax to to repesent
control characters, or characters outside of the encoding the text is
in.

[para]

All the escaped forms are started with a backslash character ('\',
unicode codepoint 0x5C). This is then followed by a series of octal
digits, or 'u' and hexedecimal digits, or a regular character from a
fixed set for various control characters. Some examples:

[example {
    \n \r \t \' \" \[ \] \\ #
    \000 up to \277         # octal escape, all ascii character, leading 0's can be removed.
    \u2CA7                  # hexadecimal escape, all unicode characters.
    #                       # Here 2ca7 <=> Koptic Small Letter Tau
}]

[subsection {Whitespace and comments}]

One issue not touched upon so far is whitespace and comments.

[para]

Whitespace is any unicode space character, i.e. anything in the
character class <space>, and comments. The latter are sequences of
characters starting with a '#' (hash, unicode codepoint 0x23) and
ending at the next end-of-line.

[para]

Whitespace can be freely used between all syntactical elements of a
grammar specification. It cannot be used inside of syntactical
elements, like names, string literals, predefined character classes,
etc.

[subsection {Nonterminal attributes}]

Lastly, a more advanced topic. In the section [sectref Rules] we gave
the structure of a rule as

[example {
     <<name>>  <-  <<expression>> ;
}]

This is not quite true. It is possible to associate a semantic mode
with the nonterminal in the rule, by writing it before the name,
separated from it by a colon, i.e. writing

[example {
    <<mode>> : <<name>>  <-  <<expression>> ;
}]

is also allowed. This mode is optional. The known modes and their
meanings are:

[include include/modes.inc]

Of these three modes only [const leaf] and [const void] can be
specified directly. [const value] is implicitly specified by the
absence of a mode before the nonterminal.

[para]

Now, with all the above under our belt it should be possible to not
only read, but understand the formal specification of the text
representation shown in the next section, written in itself.

[include include/format/peg.inc]
[include include/feedback.inc]
[manpage_end]