Erlang (programming language)/Tutorials/Yecc
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Making Parsers with yecc
Yecc is an erlang version of yacc.
We have a BNF(Backus-Naur_form) grammar in a source file ending in .yrl yrl means yecc rule list. We can parse a simple xhtml file using yecc. Actually, we use yecc to turn html.yrl into a parser, html_parser.erl. Next we use html_parser.erl to parse our xhtml data, in this case, the xhtml data is in a string.
yecc:yecc("html.yrl","html_parser.erl").
c(html_parser).
f(B), {_,B,_} =
erl_scan:string(
"<html><head></head><body>hello_world</body></html>").
html_parser:parse(B).
Note: all tags must match with open and close. (Of course a more powerful way to do xml in erlang is xmerl)
html.yrl source:
Nonterminals tag elements element start_tag end_tag .
Terminals 'atom' '<' '>' '/'.
Rootsymbol tag.
tag ->
start_tag tag end_tag :
['$1', '$2', '$3'].
tag ->
start_tag tag tag end_tag :
['$1', '$2', '$3', '$4'].
tag ->
start_tag elements end_tag :
['$1', {'contents','$2'}, '$3'].
tag ->
start_tag end_tag :
['$1','$2'].
start_tag -> '<' 'atom' '>' : {'open','$2'}.
end_tag -> '<' '/' 'atom' '>' : {'close','$3'}.
elements -> element : ['$1'].
elements -> element elements : ['$1', '$2'].
element -> atom : '$1'.
It can be a pain to build and run a parser each time we edit the source yrl file. To speed things up, we can use a program to build and run the parser for us. We compile and run the test program which builds the parser and tests it for us on some document, or in this example, the xhtml data is in a string.
-module(html_test). -compile(export_all).
start() ->
yecc:yecc("html.yrl","html_parser.erl"),
cover:compile(html_parser),
{_,List_of_symbols,_}=erl_scan:string(
"<html><head><title>greating</title></head>
<body>
hello there world what is up
</body>
</html>"),
{ok,L} = html_parser:parse(List_of_symbols),
register(do_event, spawn(html_test,event_loop,[])),
Events = lists:flatten(L),
send_events(Events),
Events.
send_events([]) -> do_event ! {exit};
send_events([H|T]) ->
do_event ! H,
%io:format(" ~w ~n",[H]),
send_events(T).
event_loop() ->
receive
{open,{atom,_Line_Number,html}} ->
io:format("~n start scan ~n", []),
event_loop();
{contents,List} ->
Contents = get_contents(List,[]),
io:format("~n contents: ~w ~n", [Contents]);
{exit} -> exit(normal)
end,
event_loop().
get_contents([],Items) -> Items;
get_contents([H|T],Items)->
if
length(T) > 0 ->
NT = hd(T);
true ->
NT = T
end,
{atom,_N,Item} = H,
NItems = Items++[Item],
% io:format(" ~w ",[Item]),
get_contents(NT,NItems).
% 6> c(html_test).
% {ok,html_test}
% 7> html_test:start().
% [greating]
% [hello,there,world,what,is,up]
% and events.