First off, let me just say that the compiler I wrote
with PyParsing is actually functional and is working
amazingly well. It has left me absolutely speechless.
I can't even begin to imagine how much work it would
have taken to get to this point without an incredible
tool like this.
Secondly, I apologize for my earlier post asking about
something that I should have seen in the FAQs. I
didn't even notice that there was an FAQ section on
the website! Doh.
Finally, on to the question at hand... How can I best
recover from a failed parse? I realize that's a really
open-ended question, so let me take a moment to
explain what's happening, how my gut says I should
handle this, and then I hopefully I can get some
feedback on whether this is the best way to go about
it or not.
My compiler is really good at detecting logic errors,
like trying to assign a value to a constant, but if
the user's error causes the parse to fail, then I
don't have much useful feedback I can give them.
For example, here's a chunk of invalid code:
a=5;
for (i = 5; i < 10; i = 7)
{
c=9;
if (a < 6)
a = 7
else
b = 9;
}
x = 5;
Note that "a = 7" is missing a ";". The parser will
decide that the assignment doesn't match the pattern I
specified, so therefor the "if" statement doesn't
match the pattern I specified, so therefore the "for"
statement doesn't match the pattern I specified.
The parser is 100% correct, but if I tell the user
"Expected end of text (at char 6), (line:3, col:1)"
then I'm not being helpful. The problem is farther
down and if I tell them the problem is on the for
statement, they will never find it.
Here's a short example program illustrating this:
http://pastie.textmate.org/167541
My gut says that the way to "fix" this is to look at
the position argument passed to my setParseAction
instances and keep track of the farthest position
through the file that the parser managed to get. The
logic here being that farthest parse position was
*PROBABLY* the closest to being successful.
I won't really have a good idea of why the parse
failed, if it does, but at least I'll have a position
in the file, and that's a good start.
Here's some more example code, illustrating the
process:
http://pastie.textmate.org/167542
Is this how you'd handle this? Is there a better way?
Is there a pitfall I'm ignoring?
Also, since this will only give me a linear position
into the file, does PyParsing expose a method to
convert this to a line/column like the ParseException
does, or should I just count up the CR's and do the
math myself?
Many thanks again,
Gre7g
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