CompilerKit

CompilerKit will be a parser combinator based compiler construction library in C.

• How can I contribute to this?
• What is the license?
• Why does this exist?
• What problems does this solve?
• How will this library work?

How can I contribute to this?

Read how to hack on CompilerKit.

What is the license?

LGPL version 2.1 or later.

Why does this library exist?

CompilerKit aims to streamline developing any software deriving tree structures from text, including compilers and interpreters. This library will be the final product of a compiler design class.

This library aims to avoid problems in existing tools by doing these:

• Work across platforms, programming languages.
• Play nicely with Unicode.
• Never block, and be thread-safe.
• Efficiently handle all possible CFGs, even ambiguous ones.
• Work as a library.
• (Future) be a drop in replacement for Bison, yacc, lex, etc.

What problems does this library solve?

Many existing compiler construction tools:

• Require learning a new syntax (e.g., lex, yacc, Bison)
• Add complexity to the build process (e.g., lex, yacc, Bison)
• Do not handle all possible context free grammars (e.g., lex, yacc)
• Work with only one language (e.g., lex, yacc)
• Produce blocking code (e.g., lex)
• Produce non thread-safe code (e.g., lex)
• Do not work well with Unicode or non-string sequences.

What is a parser combinator?

A parser combinator is a higher-order function that creates parsers from parsers.

Similar libraries:

• Boost Spirit (C++)
• Parsec (Haskell)

Proposed example usage:

Nonterminal * value = nonterminal ("value");
Nonterminal * product = nonterminal ("product");
Nonterminal * sum = nonterminal ("sum");
Nonterminal * expr = nonterminal ("expr");
Parser * formula = derivative_parser (expr);

/*
 Define the grammar below:
 value -> [0-9]+ | (expr)
 product -> value ((*|/) value)*
 sum -> product ((+|-) product)*
 expr -> sum
 */
value->becomes (many1(digit()));
value->becomes (parens(expr));
product->becomes (value, many (or(symbol('*'),symbol('/')), value));
sum->becomes (product, many (or(symbol('+'), symbol('-')), product));
expr->becomes (sum);

/* Return whether the formula parser matched the expression "(1+2+3+4)/2". Should return true */
formula->match("(1+2+3+4)/2");

/* Free the parser. */
parser_free (formula);

How will this work?

This library will use GObject internally.

We will employ test-first pair programming in the development of CompilerKit. (By the way, if you have a better name for this, I'm all ears.)

Testing and documentation first ensures that we consider the usage of this library before we develop it. It also helps track development progress by test completion and coverage.

Pair programming ensures that we learn from each other.

The library will consist of the following components:

• Regular expression engine
• Scanner
• Parser
• Language bindings

What is the regular expression engine?

The regular expression engine will be swappable:

• NFA backend
• DFA backend
• Derivative backend
• PCRE backend

What is the scanner component?

The scanner requires a regular expression engine to work.

What is the parser component?

The parser construction will be separate from the swappable parsing backends:

• Recursive descent parser.
• Derivative based parser.
• GLR parser, if time permits.

What are the language bindings?

Language bindings will make use of GObject introspection. This library will target support for:

• C#
• Python
• C++
• Java