Parsley 1.3
Parsing and pattern matching made easy.
License: MIT License

.. -*- mode: rst -*-

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Parsley: A Pattern-Matching Language Based on OMeta and Python
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You can read further docs at: http://parsley.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

Summary
-------

Parsley is a parsing library for people who find parsers scary or
annoying. I wrote it because I wanted to parse a programming language,
and tools like PLY or ANTLR or Bison were very hard to understand and
integrate into my Python code. Most parser generators are based on LL
or LR parsing algorithms that compile to big state machine
tables. It was like I had to wake up a different section of my brain
to understand or work on grammar rules.

Parsley, like pyparsing and ZestyParser, uses the PEG algorithm, so
each expression in the grammar rules works like a Python
expression. In particular, alternatives are evaluated in order, unlike
table-driven parsers such as yacc, bison or PLY.

Parsley is an implementation of OMeta, an object-oriented
pattern-matching language developed by Alessandro Warth at
http://tinlizzie.org/ometa/ . For further reading, see Warth's PhD
thesis, which provides a detailed description of OMeta:
http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2008003_experimenting.pdf

How It Works
------------

Parsley compiles a grammar to a Python class, with the rules as methods. The
rules specify parsing expressions, which consume input and return values if
they succeed in matching.

Basic syntax
~~~~~~~~~~~~
``foo = ....``:
   Define a rule named foo.

``expr1 expr2``:
   Match expr1, and then match expr2 if it succeeds, returning the value of
   expr2. Like Python's ``and``.

``expr1 | expr2``:
  Try to match ``expr1`` --- if it fails, match ``expr2`` instead. Like Python's
  ``or``.

``expr*``:
  Match ``expr`` zero or more times, returning a list of matches.

``expr+``:
  Match ``expr`` one or more times, returning a list of matches.

``expr?``:
  Try to match ``expr``. Returns ``None`` if it fails to match.

``expr{n, m}``:
  Match ``expr`` at least ``n`` times, and no more than ``m`` times.

``expr{n}``:
  Match ``expr`` ``n`` times exactly.

``~expr``:
  Negative lookahead. Fails if the next item in the input matches
  ``expr``. Consumes no input.

``~~expr``:
  Positive lookahead. Fails if the next item in the input does *not*
  match ``expr``. Consumes no input.

``ruleName`` or ``ruleName(arg1 arg2 etc)``:
  Call the rule ``ruleName``, possibly with args.

``'x'``:
  Match the literal character 'x'.

``<expr>``:
  Returns the string consumed by matching ``expr``. Good for tokenizing rules.

``expr:name``:
  Bind the result of expr to the local variable ``name``.

``-> pythonExpression``:
  Evaluate the given Python expression and return its result. Can be
  used inside parentheses too!

``!(pythonExpression)``:
  Invoke a Python expression as an action.

``?(pythonExpression)``:
  Fail if the Python expression is false, Returns True otherwise.

Comments like Python comments are supported as well, starting with #
and extending to the end of the line.

Interface
---------

The starting point for defining a new grammar is
``parsley.makeGrammar(grammarSource, bindings)``, which takes a grammar
definition and a dict of variable bindings for its embedded
expressions and produces a Python class. Grammars can be subclassed as
usual, and makeGrammar can be called on these classes to override
rules and provide new ones. Grammar rules are exposed as methods.

Example Usage
-------------

::

    from parsley import makeGrammar
    exampleGrammar = """
    ones = '1' '1' -> 1
    twos = '2' '2' -> 2
    stuff = (ones | twos)+
    """
    Example = makeGrammar(exampleGrammar, {})
    g = Example("11221111")
    result = g.stuff()
    print result

→  ``[1, 2, 1, 1]``