Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
69 lines (36 loc) · 2.32 KB

woodslist_spec.md

File metadata and controls

69 lines (36 loc) · 2.32 KB
Raw

woodslist spec

Concerning woodslist.

clarifying examples

("quoted"then) goes to ["quoted", "then"].

("first""second") goes to ["first", "second"].

So does "first""second" (without parens). If there are multiple root items in a file/string being parsed, it produces a list encompassing them.

(a "
  first
  second
")

goes to ["a", " first\n second\n"].

You should now fully understand how to parse woodslist. Afaik there are no other counterintuitive cases. If you have any additional questions, though, feel free to ask, and I may want to add an example for that.

formal definition of syntax

I'm not sure this is really useful at all, but here's a formal definition of what kinds of strings are allowed which also strongly suggests a particular way of translating that text into structure.

:keywords, words to which we assign special definitions, are written with a colon. :keywords will be bolded when defined.

We will name the elements of the syntax, then explain how those elements are mapped by a parsing method into :wood data

"any number of" means zero or more

"some" means one or more

data

the process of parsing a :file produces a :wood

a :wood is either either a :branch or a :leaf. In a Rust API, for instance, it is defined as enum Wood { Branchv(Branch), Leafv(Leaf) }. In the C API, it is a tagged union

a :branch is a sequence type containing any number of :woods

a :leaf contains a String

syntax generating rules

A woodslist file is valid if and only if it can be generated according to these rules.

:file = any number of :items, separated by any amount of :whitespace

:whitespace = some space, tab, or :newline

:newline = "\n", "\r", or if a \r is immediately followed by a \n, this pair of characters constitutes only a single :newline "\r \n" (it's an ancient standard that, AFAIK, windows still uses)

:item = one of :slist, :word, pr :quoted

:slist = ( followed by any :whitespace, :items and :newlines followed by )

:word = some :letters without :whitespace, :newlines, (, ), "

:letter = an :escaped, or any unicode letter except \. Includes :newlines

:quoted = " followed by any number of :letters, then "

:escaped = \\, \", \n (newline), \r (other newline), \t (tab)