2016-09-12 | 3163 words | Following along with fixing a grammar bug

Feelin' like bugfixing the Perl 6 compiler? Here's a great grammar bugglet: the „” quotes don't appear to work right when used in quoted white-space separated words list constructor:

say „hello world”; .say for qww<„hello world”>; .say for qww<"hello world">; # OUTPUT: # hello world # „hello # world” # hello world

The quotes should not be in the output and we should have just 3 lines in the output; all hello world . Sounds like a fun bug to fix! Let's jump in.

How do you spell that?

The fact that this piece of code doesn't parse right suggests this is a grammar bug. Most of the grammar lives in src/Perl6/Grammar.nqp, but before we get our hands dirty, let's figure out what we should be looking for.

The perl6 binary has a --target command line parameter that takes one of the compilation stages and will cause the output for that stage to be produced. What stages are there? They will differ, depending on which backend you're using, but you can just run perl6 --stagestats -e '' to print them all:

zoffix@leliana:~$ perl6 --stagestats -e '' Stage start : 0.000 Stage parse : 0.077 Stage syntaxcheck: 0.000 Stage ast : 0.000 Stage optimize : 0.001 Stage mast : 0.004 Stage mbc : 0.000 Stage moar : 0.000

Grammars are about parsing, so we'll ask for the parse target. As for the code to execute, we'll give it just the problematic bit; the qww<> :

zoffix@leliana:~$ perl6 --target=parse -e 'qww<„hello world”>' - statementlist: qww<„hello world”> - statement: 1 matches - EXPR: qww<„hello world”> - value: qww<„hello world”> - quote: qww<„hello world”> - quibble: <„hello world”> - babble: - B: - nibble: „hello world” - quote_mod: ww - sym: ww

That's great! Each of the lines is prefixed by the name of a token we can find in the grammar, so now we know where to look for the problem.

We also know that basic quotes work correctly, so let's dump the parse stage for them as well, to see if there is any difference between the two outputs:

zoffix@leliana:~$ perl6 --target=parse -e 'qww<"hello world">' - statementlist: qww<"hello world"> - statement: 1 matches - EXPR: qww<"hello world"> - value: qww<"hello world"> - quote: qww<"hello world"> - quibble: <"hello world"> - babble: - B: - nibble: "hello world" - quote_mod: ww - sym: ww

And... well, other than different quotes, the parse tree is the same. So it looks like all of the tokens involved are the same, but what is done by those tokens differs.

We don't have to examine each of the tokens we see in the output. The statementlist and statement are tokens matching general statements, the EXPR is the precedence parser, and value is one of the values it's operating on. We'll ignore those, leaving us with this list of suspects:

- quote: qww<„hello world”> - quibble: <„hello world”> - babble: - B: - nibble: „hello world” - quote_mod: ww - sym: ww

Let's start interrogating them.

Down the rabbit hole we go...

Get yourself a local Rakudo repo checkout, if you don't already have one, pop open src/Perl6/Grammar.nqp, and get comfortable.

We'll follow our tokens from the top of the tree down, so the first thing we need to find is token quote , rule quote , regex quote , or method quote ; search in that order, as the first items are more likely to be the right thing.

In this case, it's a token quote which is a proto regex. Our code uses the q version of it and you can spot the qq and Q versions next to it as well:

token quote:sym<q> { :my $qm; 'q' [ | <quote_mod> {} <.qok($/)> { $qm := $<quote_mod>.Str } <quibble(%*LANG<Quote>, 'q', $qm)> | {} <.qok($/)> <quibble(%*LANG<Quote>, 'q')> ] } token quote:sym<qq> { :my $qm; 'qq' [ | <quote_mod> { $qm := $<quote_mod>.Str } <.qok($/)> <quibble(%*LANG<Quote>, 'qq', $qm)> | {} <.qok($/)> <quibble(%*LANG<Quote>, 'qq')> ] } token quote:sym<Q> { :my $qm; 'Q' [ | <quote_mod> { $qm := $<quote_mod>.Str } <.qok($/)> <quibble(%*LANG<Quote>, $qm)> | {} <.qok($/)> <quibble(%*LANG<Quote>)> ] }

Seeing that bodies of qq and Q look similar to q , let's see if they have the bug as well:

zoffix@leliana:~$ perl6 -e '.say for qqww<„hello world”>' „hello world” zoffix@leliana:~$ perl6 -e '.say for Qww<„hello world”>' „hello world”

Yup, it's there as well, so token quote is unlikely to be the problem. Let's break down what the token quote:sym<q> is doing, to figure out how to proceed next; one of its alternations is not used by our current code, so I'll omit it:

token quote:sym<q> { :my $qm; 'q' [ | <quote_mod> {} <.qok($/)> { $qm := $<quote_mod>.Str } <quibble(%*LANG<Quote>, 'q', $qm)> | # (this branch omited) ] }

On line 2, we create a variable, then match literal q and then the quote_mod token. That one was part of our --target=parse output and if you do locate it the same way we located the quote token, you'll notice it's a proto regex that, in this case, matches the ww bit of our code. The empty {} block that follows we can ignore (it's a workaround for a bug that may have already been fixed when you read this). So far we've matched the qww bit of our code.

Moving further, we encounter the call to qok token with the current Match object as argument. The dot in <.qok signifies this is a non-capturing token match, which is why it did not show up in our --target=parse dump. Let's locate that token and see what it's about:

token qok($x) { » <![(]> [ <?[:]> || <!{ my $n := ~$x; $*W.is_name([$n]) || $*W.is_name(['&' ~ $n]) }> ] [ \s* '#' <.panic: "# not allowed as delimiter"> ]? <.ws> }

Boy! Lots of symbols, but this shit's easy: » is a right word boundary that is not followed by an opening parenthesis ( <![(]> ), followed by an alternation ( [] ), followed by a check that we aren't trying to use # as delimiters ( [...]? ), followed by <.ws> token that gobbles up all kinds of whitespace.

Inside the alternation, we use the first-token-match || alternation (as opposed to longest-token-match | one), and the first token is a lookahead for a colon <?[:]> . If that fails, we stringify the given argument ( ~$x ) and then call is_name method on the World object passing it the stringified argument as is and with & prepended. The passed ~$x is what our token quote:sym<q> token has matched so far (and that is string qww ). The is_name method simply checks if the given symbol is declared and our token match will pass or fail based on that return value. The <!{ ... }> construct we're using will fail if the evaluated code returns a truthy value.

All said and done, all this token does is check we're not using # as a delimiter and aren't trying to call a method or a sub. No signs of the bug in this corner of the room. Let's get back up to our token quote:sym<q> and see what it's doing next:

token quote:sym<q> { :my $qm; 'q' [ | <quote_mod> {} <.qok($/)> { $qm := $<quote_mod>.Str } <quibble(%*LANG<Quote>, 'q', $qm)> | # (this branch omited) ] }

We've just finished looking over the <.qok()> , so next up is { $qm := $<quote_mod>.Str } that merely assigns the string value of the matched <quote_mod> token into the $qm variable. In our case, that value is the string ww .

What follows is another token that showed up in our --target=parse output:

<quibble(%*LANG<Quote>, 'q', $qm)>

Here, we're invoking that token with three positional arguments: the Quote language braid, string q , and string ww that we saved in the $qm variable. I wonder what it's doing with 'em. That's our next stop. Full speed ahead!

Nibble Quibble Babbling Nibbler

Here's the full token quibble and you can see right away we'd have to dig deeper from the get-go, as fifth line is another token match:

token quibble($l, *@base_tweaks) { :my $lang; :my $start; :my $stop; <babble($l, @base_tweaks)> { my $B := $<babble><B>.ast; $lang := $B[0]; $start := $B[1]; $stop := $B[2]; } $start <nibble($lang)> [ $stop || { $/.CURSOR.typed_panic( 'X::Comp::AdHoc', payload => "Couldn't find terminator $stop (corresponding $start was at line { HLL::Compiler.lineof( $<babble><B>.orig(), $<babble><B>.from() ) })", expected => [$stop], ) } ] { nqp::can($lang, 'herelang') && self.queue_heredoc( $*W.nibble_to_str( $/, $<nibble>.ast[1], -> { "Stopper '" ~ $<nibble> ~ "' too complex for heredoc" } ), $lang.herelang, ) } }

We define three variables and then invoke the babble token with the same arguments we invoked quibble with. Let's find it the same way we found all the previous tokens and peek at its guts. For the sake of brevity, I removed about half of it: that portion deals with adverbs, which we aren't using in our code at the moment.

token babble($l, @base_tweaks?) { :my @extra_tweaks; # <irrelevant portion redacted> $<B>=[<?before .>] { # Work out the delimeters. my $c := $/.CURSOR; my @delims := $c.peek_delimiters($c.target, $c.pos); my $start := @delims[0]; my $stop := @delims[1]; # Get the language. my $lang := self.quote_lang($l, $start, $stop, @base_tweaks, @extra_tweaks); $<B>.'!make'([$lang, $start, $stop]); } }

We start by capturing a lookahead into the $<B> capture, which serves to update the current Cursor postion, and then go in to execute the code block. We store the current Cursor into $c , and then call .peek_delimiters method on it. If we grep in a built rakudo directory for it, we'll see it's defined in NQP, in nqp/src/HLL/Grammar.nqp , but before we rush out to read its code, notice how it returns two delimiters. Let's just print them out?

The .nqp extension of the src/Perl6/Grammar.nqp we are in signifies we're in NQP land, so we need to use NQP ops only and not full-blown Perl 6 code. By adding this line after the lines where @delim is assigned to $start and $stop , we can find what .peek_delimiters gives us:

nqp::say("$start $stop");

Compile!

$ perl Configure.pl --gen-moar --gen-nqp --backends=moar && make && make test && make install

Even during compilation, by spewing extra stuff, our debug line already gives us an idea what these delimiters are all about. Run our problematic code again:

$ ./perl6 -e '.say for qww<„hello world”>;' < > hello world

The delimiters are the angled bracket delimiters of the qww . We're not interested in those, so we can ignore .peek_delimiters and move on. Next up is the .quote_lang method. It's got "quote" in the name and we have a problem with quotes... sounds like we're getting closer. Let's take a note of what arguments we're passing to it:

$l —the Quote language braid

—the language braid $start / $stop —angled bracket delimiters

/ —angled bracket delimiters @base_tweaks —contains one element: string ww

—contains one element: string @extra_tweaks —extra adverbs, which we do not have, so the array is empty

Locate method quote_lang ; it's still in the src/Perl6/Grammar.nqp file:

method quote_lang($l, $start, $stop, @base_tweaks?, @extra_tweaks?) { sub lang_key() { # <body redacted> } sub con_lang() { # <body redacted> } # Get language from cache or derive it. my $key := lang_key(); nqp::existskey(%quote_lang_cache, $key) && $key ne 'NOCACHE' ?? %quote_lang_cache{$key} !! (%quote_lang_cache{$key} := con_lang()); }

We have two lexical subroutines lang_key and con_lang , below them we store the output of lang_key into $key which is used in the whole cache dance in %quote_lang_cache , so we can ignore the lang_key sub and go straight to con_lang , which is called to generate the return value of our quote_lang method:

sub con_lang() { my $lang := $l.'!cursor_init'(self.orig(), :p(self.pos()), :shared(self.'!shared'())); for @base_tweaks { $lang := $lang."tweak_$_"(1); } for @extra_tweaks { my $t := $_[0]; if nqp::can($lang, "tweak_$t") { $lang := $lang."tweak_$t"($_[1]); } else { self.sorry("Unrecognized adverb: :$t"); } } nqp::istype($stop,VMArray) || $start ne $stop ?? $lang.balanced($start, $stop) !! $lang.unbalanced($stop); }

After initializing Cursor position, $lang contains our Quote language braid and then we descend into a for loop over @base_tweaks . For each of them, we call method tweak_$_ , passing it a truthy value 1 . Since we have just one base tweak, this means we're calling method tweak_ww on the Quote braid. Let's see what that method is about.

Since the Quote braid is defined in the same file, just search for method tweak_ww :

method tweak_ww($v) { $v ?? self.add-postproc("quotewords").apply_tweak(ww) !! self }

Great. The $v we gave it is true, so we call .add-postproc and then .apply_tweak(ww) . Looking above and below that method, we see .add-postproc is also used in other, non-buggy, quoters, so let's ignore it and jump straight to .apply_tweak :

method apply_tweak($role) { my $target := nqp::can(self, 'herelang') ?? self.herelang !! self; $target.HOW.mixin($target, $role); self }

Aha! Its argument is a role and it mixes it into our Quote braid. Let's see what that role is about (again, just search the file for role ww , or simply scroll up a bit):

role ww { token escape:sym<' '> { <?[']> <quote=.LANG('MAIN','quote')> } token escape:sym<‘ ’> { <?[‘]> <quote=.LANG('MAIN','quote')> } token escape:sym<" "> { <?["]> <quote=.LANG('MAIN','quote')> } token escape:sym<“ ”> { <?[“]> <quote=.LANG('MAIN','quote')> } token escape:sym<colonpair> { <?[:]> <!RESTRICTED> <colonpair=.LANG('MAIN','colonpair')> } token escape:sym<#> { <?[#]> <.LANG('MAIN', 'comment')> } }

Oh, boy! Quotes! If this isn't the place were we fix our bug, then I'm a ballerina. We found it!

The role we located mixes in some tokens into the Quote braid we are using to parse the qww 's contents. Our buggy combination of „” quotes is conspicuously absent from the list. Let's add it!

token escape:sym<„ ”> { <?[„]> <quote=.LANG('MAIN','quote')> }

Compile! Run our buggy code:

$ ./perl6 -e '.say for qww<foo „hello world” bar>' foo bar

Oopsie! Well, we certainly found the right place for quote handling, but we made the problem worse. What's happening?

Quotastic Inaction

Our new token sure parses the quotes, but we never added the Actions to... well, act on it. Action classes live next door to Grammars, in src/Perl6/Actions.nqp . Pop it open and locate the matching method; let's say method escape:sym<“ ”> .

method escape:sym<' '>($/) { make mark_ww_atom($<quote>.ast); } method escape:sym<" ">($/) { make mark_ww_atom($<quote>.ast); } method escape:sym<‘ ’>($/) { make mark_ww_atom($<quote>.ast); } method escape:sym<“ ”>($/) { make mark_ww_atom($<quote>.ast); }

Let's add our version to the list:

method escape:sym<„ ”>($/) { make mark_ww_atom($<quote>.ast); }

Compile! Run our buggy code:

$ ./perl6 -e '.say for qww<foo „hello world” bar>' foo hello world bar

Woohoo! Success! It's no longer buggy. We fixed it! 🎊🎉

But, wait...

Left out, but not forgotten

Take a look at the list of all the possible fancy-pants quotes. Even though our bug report only mentioned the „” pair, neither ‚‘ nor ｢｣ are in the list of our role ww tokens. More than that, some left/right quotes, when swapped, work just fine when quoting strings, so they should work in qww too. However, adding a whole bunch of extra tokens and a whole 'nother bunch of actions methods is quite un-awesome. Is there a better way?

Let's take a closer look at our tokens:

token escape:sym<“ ”> { <?[“]> <quote=.LANG('MAIN','quote')> }

The sym<“ ”> we can ignore—here it's functioning just as a name. What we are left with is a look-ahead for a “ quote and the assigment of the result of the quote token from MAIN language braid to $<quote> capture. So we can look-ahead for all of the opening quotes we care about and let the MAIN braid take care of all the details.

So, let's replace all of the quote handling tokens with this single one:

token escape:sym<'> { <?[ ' " ‘ ‚ ’ “ „ ” ｢ ]> <quote=.LANG('MAIN','quote')> }

And replace all of the matching actions methods with this single one:

method escape:sym<'>($/) { make mark_ww_atom($<quote>.ast); }

Compile! Run our code with some quote variations:

$ ./perl6 -e '.say for qww<„looks like” ‚we fixed‘ ｢this thing｣>' looks like we fixed this thing

Awesome! Not only did we make all of the quotes work right, we also managed to clean up the existing tokens and action methods. All we need now is a test for our fix and we're ready to commit.

Feasting on The Bug Roast

The Official Perl 6 Test Suite (Roast) is in t/spec inside of the Rakudo build dir. If it's missing, just run make spectest and abort it after it clones the roast repo into t/spec . We need to find where to stick our test and grep is a good friend at that task:

zoffix@VirtualBox:~/CPANPRC/rakudo/t/spec$ grep -R 'qww' . Binary file ./.git/objects/pack/pack-5bdee39f28283fef4b500859f5b288ea4eec20d7.pack matches ./S02-literals/allomorphic.t: my @wordlist = qqww[1 2/3 4.5 6e7 8+9i] Z (IntStr, RatStr, RatStr, NumStr, ComplexStr); ./S02-literals/allomorphic.t: isa-ok $val, Str, "'$val' from qqww[] is a Str"; ./S02-literals/allomorphic.t: nok $val.isa($wrong-type), "'$val' from qqww[] is not a $wrong-type.perl()"; ./S02-literals/allomorphic.t: my @wordlist = qqww:v[1 2/3 4.5 6e7 8+9i]; ./S02-literals/allomorphic.t: my @written = qqww:v[1 2/3 $num 6e7 8+9i ten]; ./S02-literals/allomorphic.t: is-deeply @angled, @written, "«...» is equivalent to qqww:v[...]"; ./S02-literals/quoting.t: is(qqww[$alpha $beta], <foo bar>, 'qqww'); ./S02-literals/quoting.t: for (<<$a b c>>, qqww{$a b c}, qqw{$a b c}).kv -> $i, $_ { ./S02-literals/quoting.t: is-deeply qww<a a ‘b b’ ‚b b’ ’b b‘ ’b b‘ ’b b’ ‚b b‘ ‚b b’ “b b” „b b” ./S02-literals/quoting.t: 'fancy quotes in qww work just like regular quotes'; ./integration/advent2014-day16.t: for flat qww/ foo bar 'first second' / Z @a -> $string, $result {

It appears S02-literals/quoting.t is a good place for it. Pop open the file. At the top of it, increase plan number by the number of tests we're adding—in this case just one. Then scroll to the end and create a block, with a comment in front of it, referencing the RT ticket number for the bug report we're fixing.

Inside of it, we'll use is-deeply test function that uses eqv operator semantics to do the test. We'll give it a qww<> line with whole bunch of quotes and then tell it what list of items we expect to get in return. Write the test description as well:

# RT #128304 { is-deeply qww<a a ‘b b’ ‚b b’ ’b b‘ ’b b‘ ’b b’ ‚b b‘ ‚b b’ “b b” „b b” ”b b“ ”b b“ ”b b” „b b“ „b b” ｢b b｣ ｢b b｣>, ('a', 'a', |('b b' xx 16)), 'fancy quotes in qww work just like regular quotes'; }

Back in the Rakudo checkout, run the modified test and ensure it passes:

$ make t/spec/S02-literals/quoting.t # <lots of output> All tests successful. Files=1, Tests=185, 3 wallclock secs ( 0.03 usr 0.01 sys + 2.76 cusr 0.11 csys = 2.91 CPU) Result: PASS

Sweet. Commit the tests and the bug fix and ship them off! We're done!

Conclusion

When fixing parsing bugs in Perl 6, it's useful to reduce the program to the minimum that still reproduces the bug and then use the --target=parse command line argument, to get the output of the parse tree, finding which tokens are being matched.

Then, follow those tokens in src/Perl6/Grammar.nqp , which also inherits from NQP's src/HLL/Grammar.nqp . In conjunction with the actions classes located in src/Perl6/Actions.nqp , follow the code to figure out what it is doing and hopefully find where the problem is located.

Fix it. Test it. Ship it.

-Ofun