CHANGES

In Progress
-----------

06/26/2021 Experimental support for counterexamples. SLY will now give
           counterexamples for shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts.

05/09/2020 Experimental support for EBNF choices.  For example:

	      @('term { PLUS|MINUS term }')
              def expr(self, p):
                  lterm = p.pterm0
                  for op, rterm in p[1]:
		      lterm = BinOp(op, lterm, rterm)

           One issue here is just how one refers to the choice
           of values.  There is no unified name to pick. So,
           you basically have to do it using a numeric index like p[1].
           In this case, p[1] is a list of all of the repeated items
           (represented as tuples).

05/09/2020 Changed the internal names used for EBNF rules to make them
           a bit easier to debug in the parser.out file.

Version 0.4
-----------

03/06/2020 Added experimental support for EBNF repetition and optional
           syntax.  For example, here is a rule for a comma-separated
           expression list:

               @('expr { COMMA expr }')
               def exprlist(self, p):
                   return [ p.expr0 ] + p.expr1

           In this code, the { ... } means zero-or-more repetitions.
           It turns all symbols inside into lists.  So, instead of
           representing a single value, p.expr1 is now a list of 
           values.  

           An optional value can be enclosed in brackets like this:

              @('VAR NAME [ EQUAL expr ] SEMI')
              def variable_declaration(self, p):
                  print(f"Definining {p.NAME}. Initial value={p.expr}")

           In this case, all symbols inside [ ... ] either have a value
           if present or are assigned to None if missing.

           In both cases, you continue to use the same name indexing
           scheme used by the rest of SLY.  For example, in the first
           example above, you use "expr0" and "expr1" to refer to the
           different "expr" symbols since that name appears in more
           than one place.

04/09/2019 Fixed very mysterious error message that resulted if you 
           defined a grammar rule called "start".   start can now 
           be a string or a function.

04/09/2019 Minor refinement to the reporting of reduce/reduce conflicts.
           If a top grammar rule wasn't specified, SLY could fail with 
           a mysterious "unknown conflict" exception.  This should be
           fixed.

11/18/2018 Various usability fixes observed from last compilers course.

            - Errors encountered during grammar construction are now
              reported as part of the raised GrammarError exception
              instead of via logging.  This places them in the same
              visual position as normal Python errors (at the end
              of the traceback)

            - Repeated warning messages about unused tokens have
              been consolidated in a single warning message to make
              the output less verbose.

            - Grammar attributes (e.g., p.TOKEN) used during parsing
              are now read-only.

            - The error about "infinite recursion" is only checked
              if there are no undefined grammar symbols.  Sometimes
              you'd get this message and be confused when the only
              mistake was a bad token name or similar. 
          

9/8/2018   Fixed Issue #14.  YaccProduction index property causes
           AttributeError if index is 0

9/5/2018   Added support for getattr() and related functions on
           productions.

Version 0.3
-----------
4/1/2018   Support for Lexer inheritance added.  For example:

            from sly import Lexer

            class BaseLexer(Lexer):
                tokens = { NAME, NUMBER }
                ignore = ' \t'
		
                NAME = r'[a-zA-Z]+'
		NUMBER = r'\d+'

               
            class ChildLexer(BaseLexer):
                tokens = { PLUS, MINUS }
                PLUS = r'\+'
                MINUS = r'-'

           In this example, the ChildLexer class gets all of the tokens
           from the parent class (BaseLexer) in addition to the new
           definitions it added of its own.  

           One quirk of Lexer inheritance is that definition order has
           an impact on the low-level regular expression parsing.  By
           default new definitions are always processed AFTER any previous
           definitions.  You can change this using the before() function
           like this:

            class GrandChildLexer(ChildLexer):
                tokens = { PLUSPLUS, MINUSMINUS }
                PLUSPLUS = before(PLUS, r'\+\+')
                MINUSMINUS = before(MINUS, r'--')

           In this example, the PLUSPLUS token is checked before the
           PLUS token in the base class.  Thus, an input text of '++'
           will be parsed as a single token PLUSPLUS, not two PLUS tokens.

4/1/2018   Better support for lexing states.   Each lexing state can be defined as
           as a separate class.  Use the begin(cls) method to switch to a
           different state.  For example:

            from sly import Lexer

            class LexerA(Lexer):
                tokens = { NAME, NUMBER, LBRACE }

                ignore = ' \t'

                NAME = r'[a-zA-Z]+'
                NUMBER = r'\d+'
                LBRACE = r'\{'

                def LBRACE(self, t):
                    self.begin(LexerB)
                    return t

            class LexerB(Lexer):
                tokens = { PLUS, MINUS, RBRACE }

                ignore = ' \t'

                PLUS = r'\+'
                MINUS = r'-'
                RBRACE = r'\}'

                def RBRACE(self, t):
                    self.begin(LexerA)
                    return t

           In this example, LexerA switches to a new state LexerB when
           a left brace ({) is encountered.  The begin() method causes
           the state transition.   LexerB switches back to state LexerA
           when a right brace (}) is encountered.

           An option to the begin() method, you can also use push_state(cls)
           and pop_state(cls) methods.  This manages the lexing states as a
           stack.  The pop_state() method will return back to the previous
           lexing state.
   
1/27/2018  Tokens no longer have to be specified as strings.   For example, you
           can now write:

           from sly import Lexer

           class TheLexer(Lexer):
               tokens = { ID, NUMBER, PLUS, MINUS }

               ID = r'[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*'
               NUMBER = r'\d+'
               PLUS = r'\+'
               MINUS = r'-'

           This convention also carries over to the parser for things such
           as precedence specifiers:

           from sly import Parser
           class TheParser(Parser):
                 tokens = TheLexer.tokens

                 precedence = (
                     ('left', PLUS, MINUS),
                     ('left', TIMES, DIVIDE),
                     ('right', UMINUS),
                  )
            ...

           Nevermind the fact that ID, NUMBER, PLUS, and MINUS appear to be
           undefined identifiers.  It all works. 

1/27/2018  Tokens now allow special-case remapping.   For example:

           from sly import Lexer

           class TheLexer(Lexer):
               tokens = { ID, IF, ELSE, WHILE, NUMBER, PLUS, MINUS }

               ID = r'[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*'
               ID['if'] = IF
               ID['else'] = ELSE
               ID['while'] = WHILE

               NUMBER = r'\d+'
               PLUS = r'\+'
               MINUS = r'-'
       
           In this code, the ID rule matches any identifier.  However,
           special cases have been made for IF, ELSE, and WHILE tokens.
           Previously, this had to be handled in a special action method 
           such as this:

               def ID(self, t):
                   if t.value in { 'if', 'else', 'while' }:
                       t.type = t.value.upper()
                   return t

           Nevermind the fact that the syntax appears to suggest that strings
           work as a kind of mutable mapping.
      
1/16/2018  Usability improvement on Lexer class.  Regular expression rules
           specified as strings that don't match any name in tokens are
           now reported as errors.

Version 0.2
-----------

12/24/2017 The error(self, t) method of lexer objects now receives a
           token as input.  The value attribute of this token contains
           all remaining input text.  If the passed token is returned
           by error(), then it shows up in the token stream where
           can be processed by the parser.