PLY (Python Lex-Yacc)

Copyright (C) 2001-2020 David M. Beazley (Dabeaz LLC) All rights reserved.

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Introduction

PLY is a 100% Python implementation of the common parsing tools lex and yacc. Here are a few highlights:

• PLY is very closely modeled after traditional lex/yacc. If you know how to use these tools in C, you will find PLY to be similar.

• PLY provides very extensive error reporting and diagnostic information to assist in parser construction. The original implementation was developed for instructional purposes. As a result, the system tries to identify the most common types of errors made by novice users.

• PLY provides full support for empty productions, error recovery, precedence specifiers, and moderately ambiguous grammars.

• Parsing is based on LR-parsing which is fast, memory efficient, better suited to large grammars, and which has a number of nice properties when dealing with syntax errors and other parsing problems. Currently, PLY builds its parsing tables using the LALR(1) algorithm used in yacc.

• PLY uses Python introspection features to build lexers and parsers.
  This greatly simplifies the task of parser construction since it reduces the number of files and eliminates the need to run a separate lex/yacc tool before running your program.

• PLY can be used to build parsers for "real" programming languages. Although it is not ultra-fast due to its Python implementation, PLY can be used to parse grammars consisting of several hundred rules (as might be found for a language like C). The lexer and LR parser are also reasonably efficient when parsing typically sized programs. People have used PLY to build parsers for C, C++, ADA, and other real programming languages.

How to Use

PLY consists of two files : lex.py and yacc.py. These are contained within the ply directory which may also be used as a Python package. To use PLY, simply copy the ply directory to your project and import lex and yacc from the associated ply package. For example:

from .ply import lex
from .ply import yacc

Alternatively, you can copy just the files lex.py and yacc.py individually and use them as modules however you see fit. For example:

import lex
import yacc

If you wish, you can use the install.py script to install PLY into virtual environment.

PLY has no third-party dependencies.

The docs/ directory contains complete documentation on how to use the system. Documentation available at https://ply.readthedocs.io

The example directory contains several different examples including a PLY specification for ANSI C as given in K&R 2nd Ed.

A simple example is found at the end of this document

Requirements

PLY requires the use of Python 3.6 or greater. However, you should use the latest Python release if possible. It should work on just about any platform.

Note: PLY does not support execution under python -OO. It can be made to work in that mode, but you'll need to change the programming interface with a decorator. See the documentation for details.

Resources

Official Documentation is available at:

• https://ply.readthedocs.io

More information about PLY can be obtained on the PLY webpage at:

• http://www.dabeaz.com/ply

For a detailed overview of parsing theory, consult the excellent book "Compilers : Principles, Techniques, and Tools" by Aho, Sethi, and Ullman. The topics found in "Lex & Yacc" by Levine, Mason, and Brown may also be useful.

The GitHub page for PLY can be found at:

• https://github.com/dabeaz/ply

Acknowledgments

A special thanks is in order for all of the students in CS326 who suffered through about 25 different versions of these tools :-).

The CHANGES file acknowledges those who have contributed patches.

Elias Ioup did the first implementation of LALR(1) parsing in PLY-1.x. Andrew Waters and Markus Schoepflin were instrumental in reporting bugs and testing a revised LALR(1) implementation for PLY-2.0.

Example

Here is a simple example showing a PLY implementation of a calculator with variables.

# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# calc.py
#
# A simple calculator with variables.
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

tokens = (
    'NAME','NUMBER',
    'PLUS','MINUS','TIMES','DIVIDE','EQUALS',
    'LPAREN','RPAREN',
    )

# Tokens

t_PLUS    = r'\+'
t_MINUS   = r'-'
t_TIMES   = r'\*'
t_DIVIDE  = r'/'
t_EQUALS  = r'='
t_LPAREN  = r'\('
t_RPAREN  = r'\)'
t_NAME    = r'[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*'

def t_NUMBER(t):
    r'\d+'
    t.value = int(t.value)
    return t

# Ignored characters
t_ignore = " \t"

def t_newline(t):
    r'\n+'
    t.lexer.lineno += t.value.count("\n")

def t_error(t):
    print(f"Illegal character {t.value[0]!r}")
    t.lexer.skip(1)

# Build the lexer
import ply.lex as lex
lex.lex()

# Precedence rules for the arithmetic operators
precedence = (
    ('left','PLUS','MINUS'),
    ('left','TIMES','DIVIDE'),
    ('right','UMINUS'),
    )

# dictionary of names (for storing variables)
names = { }

def p_statement_assign(p):
    'statement : NAME EQUALS expression'
    names[p[1]] = p[3]

def p_statement_expr(p):
    'statement : expression'
    print(p[1])

def p_expression_binop(p):
    '''expression : expression PLUS expression
                  | expression MINUS expression
                  | expression TIMES expression
                  | expression DIVIDE expression'''
    if p[2] == '+'  : p[0] = p[1] + p[3]
    elif p[2] == '-': p[0] = p[1] - p[3]
    elif p[2] == '*': p[0] = p[1] * p[3]
    elif p[2] == '/': p[0] = p[1] / p[3]

def p_expression_uminus(p):
    'expression : MINUS expression %prec UMINUS'
    p[0] = -p[2]

def p_expression_group(p):
    'expression : LPAREN expression RPAREN'
    p[0] = p[2]

def p_expression_number(p):
    'expression : NUMBER'
    p[0] = p[1]

def p_expression_name(p):
    'expression : NAME'
    try:
        p[0] = names[p[1]]
    except LookupError:
        print(f"Undefined name {p[1]!r}")
        p[0] = 0

def p_error(p):
    print(f"Syntax error at {p.value!r}")

import ply.yacc as yacc
yacc.yacc()

while True:
    try:
        s = input('calc > ')
    except EOFError:
        break
    yacc.parse(s)

Bug Reports and Patches

My goal with PLY is to simply have a decent lex/yacc implementation for Python. As a general rule, I don't spend huge amounts of time working on it unless I receive very specific bug reports and/or patches to fix problems. At this time, PLY is mature software and new features are no longer being added. If you think you have found a bug, please visit the PLY Github page at https://github.com/dabeaz/ply to report an issue.

Take a Class!

If you'd like to learn more about compiler principles and have a go at implementing a compiler, come take a course. https://www.dabeaz.com/compiler.html.

-- Dave