How do I parse indents and dedents with pyparsing?

Question

Here is a subset of the Python grammar:

single_input: NEWLINE | simple_stmt | compound_stmt NEWLINE

stmt: simple_stmt | compound_stmt
simple_stmt: small_stmt (';' small_stmt)* [';'] NEWLINE

small_stmt: pass_stmt
pass_stmt: 'pass'

compound_stmt: if_stmt
if_stmt: 'if' test ':' suite ('elif' test ':' suite)* ['else' ':' suite]

suite: simple_stmt | NEWLINE INDENT stmt+ DEDENT

(You can read the full grammar in the Python SVN repository: http://svn.python.org/.../Grammar)

I am trying to use this grammar to generate a parser for Python, in Python. What I am having trouble with is how to express the INDENT and DEDENT tokens as pyparsing objects.

Here is how I have implemented the other terminals:

import pyparsing as p

string_start = (p.Literal('"""') | "'''" | '"' | "'")
string_token = ('\\' + p.CharsNotIn("",exact=1) | p.CharsNotIn('\\',exact=1))
string_end = p.matchPreviousExpr(string_start)

terminals = {
    'NEWLINE': p.Literal('\n').setWhitespaceChars(' \t')
        .setName('NEWLINE').setParseAction(terminal_action('NEWLINE')),
    'ENDMARKER': p.stringEnd.copy().setWhitespaceChars(' \t')
        .setName('ENDMARKER').setParseAction(terminal_action('ENDMARKER')),
    'NAME': (p.Word(p.alphas + "_", p.alphanums + "_", asKeyword=True))
        .setName('NAME').setParseAction(terminal_action('NAME')),
    'NUMBER': p.Combine(
            p.Word(p.nums) + p.CaselessLiteral("l") |
            (p.Word(p.nums) + p.Optional("." + p.Optional(p.Word(p.nums))) | "." + p.Word(p.nums)) +
                p.Optional(p.CaselessLiteral("e") + p.Optional(p.Literal("+") | "-") + p.Word(p.nums)) +
                p.Optional(p.CaselessLiteral("j"))
        ).setName('NUMBER').setParseAction(terminal_action('NUMBER')),
    'STRING': p.Combine(
            p.Optional(p.CaselessLiteral('u')) +
            p.Optional(p.CaselessLiteral('r')) +
            string_start + p.ZeroOrMore(~string_end + string_token) + string_end
        ).setName('STRING').setParseAction(terminal_action('STRING')),

    # I can't find a good way of parsing indents/dedents.
    # The Grammar just has the tokens NEWLINE, INDENT and DEDENT scattered accross the rules.
    # A single NEWLINE would be translated to NEWLINE + PEER (from pyparsing.indentedBlock()), unless followed by INDENT or DEDENT
    # That NEWLINE and IN/DEDENT could be spit across rule boundaries. (see the 'suite' rule)
    'INDENT': (p.LineStart() + p.Optional(p.Word(' '))).setName('INDENT'),
    'DEDENT': (p.LineStart() + p.Optional(p.Word(' '))).setName('DEDENT')
}

terminal_action is a function that returns the corresponding parsing action, depending on its arguments.

I am aware of the pyparsing.indentedBlock helper function, but I am can't figure out how to adopt that to a grammar without the PEER token.

(Look at the pyparsing souce code to see what I am talking about)

You can see my full source code here: http://pastebin.ca/1609860

Answer 1

There are a couple of examples on the pyparsing wiki Examples page that could give you some insights:

• pythonGrammarParser.py
• indentedGrammarExample.py

To use pyparsing's indentedBlock, I think you would define suite as:

indentstack = [1]
suite = indentedBlock(stmt, indentstack, True)

Note that indentedGrammarExample.py pre-dates the inclusion of indentedBlock in pyparsing, so does its own implemention of indent parsing.