[erlang-questions] BNF/EBNF Grammar for Erlang

Ryan Molden ryanmolden@REDACTED
Sun Nov 13 18:26:48 CET 2011


Great, thanks for all the help!

As backstory I have been using an Erlang related project as a driver for
also learning boost::spirit, basically I have an Erlang lexer at the moment
that handles everything I have thrown at it thus far. I was looking for the
grammar as a way to sanity check what I have. The YRL grammar has allowed
for that, and shown me a couple of terminals I didn't know about before.

As an aside can you give me info/pointers on where to find info on the
following terminals?

':-'   This seems to be used around 'rules' (which I have never seen in any
Erlang program I have looked at, but I am a newb).  Examples or even just a
name for this syntactic construct would be nice.  My lexer token currently
calls it RULETHINGY :)

'..'    Never seen this, but it is listed in the YRL file as a terminal.
Name and meaning would be nice.

'...'   Never seen this, but it is listed in the YRL file as a terminal.
Name and meaning would be nice.

Ryan

On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 9:44 AM, Joe Armstrong <erlang@REDACTED> wrote:

> If you dig deeper you have two alternatives:
>
> 1) learn yecc (it's like bison/yacc etc.) Yacc grammers are
>     easy (ish) to read (one you understand the syntax) but difficult
>    to debug if you get  them wrong.
>
> 2) Search for an EBNF/BNF/Peg grammar from Erlang
>
> Of the two 1) is the quickest alternative. I have never ever seen
> a complete type 2) grammar for Erlang - subsets yes - complete grammars
> no. It would take a considerable amount of work to
> make a type 2) grammar for Erlang and even if you found one you would
> never know if the grammar described the same language
> as a type 1) grammar - equivalence of grammars is undecidable
> in general.
>
> If you want to play with the parser the following function is
> useful:
>
> string2exprs(Str) ->
>     case erl_scan:tokens([], Str ++ ". ", 1) of
>  {done, {ok, Toks, _}, []} ->
>     case erl_parse:parse_exprs(Toks) of
> {ok, Exprs} ->
>     {ok, Exprs};
> {error,{Line,Mod,Arg}} ->
>     EStr = io_lib:format("~s",[apply(Mod,format_error,[Arg])]),
>     Msg = lists:flatten(EStr),
>     io:format("~n***PARSE ERROR in line:~w ~s~n", [Line,Msg]),
>     io:format("Str=~s~n",[Str]),
>     error
>     end;
>  Other ->
>     io:format("~n***SCAN ERROR:~p~n", [Other]),
>     error
>     end.
>
> This is a very simple interface to the generated parser. So for example,
> if you add this to the module mymod you can run it like this:
>
> > mymod:string2exprs("case foo(X) of 1 -> sqrt(Y) end").
> {ok,[{'case',1,
>              {call,1,{atom,1,foo},[{var,1,'X'}]},
>              [{clause,1,
>                       [{integer,1,1}],
>                       [],
>                       [{call,1,{atom,1,sqrt},[{var,1,'Y'}]}]}]}]}
>
> If you read the above code you'll see how to get from the
> world of strings to tokens using erl_scan:tokens, and from tokens
> to parse trees using erl_parse:parse_exprs.
>
> the module erl_parse is automatically generated from the grammar.
>
> The above term is generated by the mysterious right hand sides following
> the colons in the productions:
>
> The appropriate line in the grammar that did this was lines
> 378-380 ie.
>
>
> case_expr -> 'case' expr 'of' cr_clauses 'end' :
>
> 	{'case',?line('$1'),'$2','$4'}.
>
>
> Have fun
>
> /Joe
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 9:56 PM, Ryan Molden <ryanmolden@REDACTED> wrote:
>
>> Great, thanks I will give the YRL a shot (ignoring 'everything to the
>> right of the ':' may really be all that is needed, it wasn't clear to me if
>> that was somehow essentially in expressing what the YRL was trying to
>> represent).
>>
>> Ryan
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Joe Armstrong <erlang@REDACTED> wrote:
>>
>>> I don't think there are any BNF/EBNF grammars for erlang
>>> there might be grammars for subsets of the language but not the
>>> entire language.  The problem with NBF/EBNF/PEG grammars
>>> is that decent error reporting is very difficult. In practice
>>> virtual all languages use hand written recursive descent parsers
>>> or LALR(1) parsers for which acceptable error recovery strategies exist.
>>>
>>> The official grammar is: (official means this is the actual grammar used
>>> by the erlang compiler and all tools)
>>>
>>> https://github.com/erlang/otp/blob/master/lib/stdlib/src/erl_parse.yrl
>>>
>>> It you look at the productions they are very similar to yacc
>>> productions:
>>>
>>> For example a tuple is defined like this (line 330,331)
>>>
>>> tuple -> '{' '}'       : {tuple,?line('$1'),[]}.
>>> tuple -> '{' exprs '}' : {tuple,?line('$1'),'$2'}.
>>>
>>> If you forget about the stuff after the ':' this
>>> reads
>>>
>>>    tuple -> '{' '}'
>>>    tuple -> {' exprs '}'
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ie a tuple is either {} or { exprs }
>>>
>>> The part after the ':' define the parse tree that
>>> is returned if the expression is recognised.
>>>
>>> A production like:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> a -> b c d : {something, '$2'}
>>>
>>> means is we match an 'a' then the parse
>>> tree we want returned is {something, '$2'}
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> '$1' is the parse tree of b, '$2' is the parse tree
>>> of c etc.
>>>
>>> and exprs (line 445/446) is defined
>>>
>>> exprs -> expr           : ['$1'].
>>> exprs -> expr ',' exprs : ['$1' | '$3'].
>>>
>>>
>>> ie exprs is an expr or a comma separated
>>> sequence of expr's
>>>
>>> In the original yacc this would be written
>>> something like
>>>
>>> exprs: expr {$$ = $1}
>>> | expr ',' exprs {$$ = [$1|$3]}
>>>
>>> The yecc manual is at http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/yecc.html
>>>
>>> the command
>>>
>>> > erlc erlang.yecc
>>>
>>> compiles the grammar into a beam file
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>>
>>> /Joe
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 5:08 PM, Ryan Molden <ryanmolden@REDACTED>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Howdy fellow Erlangeers.  I was wondering if anyone knew of a BNF/EBNF
>>>> grammar for Erlang?  Joe Armstrong pointed me at the YRL grammar at github;
>>>> unfortunately, I am YRL illiterate so it looked mostly like gibberish to me.
>>>>
>>>> Ryan
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> erlang-questions mailing list
>>>> erlang-questions@REDACTED
>>>> http://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
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