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Implementing an EBNF grammar in pest

A recent project has led me to have a go at writing an XML parser.

I thought I’d document my experiences using pest to implement a lexer using the EBNF-esque formal grammar.

Caveats

I have only passing experience with parsing and grammars.

Getting started

First things first - adding the necessary dependencies to my Cargo.toml:

[dependencies] pest = "2.0" pest_derive = "2.0"

And setting up my code to pull in a pest file:

extern crate pest; #[macro_use] extern crate pest_derive; #[derive(Parser)] #[grammar = "xml1_0.pest"] pub struct XmlParser1_0;

Now we’re ready to dig into the real fun - writing the parsing expression grammar.

XmlParser1_0

I named my parser type that because I’m implementing the current revision of the xml 1.0 spec. There’s a 1.1 spec, but it’s apparently mostly uninteresting to anyone able to use the latest revision of the 1.0 spec. The xml 1.1 specification indicates that 1.0 should be preferred unless there’s a specific requirement for 1.1 features, so 1.0 seems like a great foundation to build from.

Pest allows comments in its grammar files by starting the line with // . I use this extensively to document the relevant sections of the xml spec for each production.

The Basics - document

Let’s take a look at the first one, xml 1.0 production 1:

// # Document // [1](https://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-xml-20081126/#NT-document) // `document ::= prolog element Misc*` document = { prolog ~ element ~ Misc* }

The first production (the spec gives each production a unique number) says a document consists of a prolog , followed by an element , and then zero or more Misc s.

The pest syntax for a production looks like <name> = { <rules> } . To say “ A then B ”, you write that “ A ~ B ”.

Consequently, document ::= prolog element Misc* would be written in pest as document = { prolog ~ element ~ Misc* } .

Characters, Alternation, and Ranges

The next production is used in defining generally acceptable character ranges. It introduces a few new basic syntactic concepts:

// # Character Range // [2](https://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-xml-20081126/#NT-Char) // `Char ::= #x9 | #xA | #xD | [#x20-#xD7FF] | [#xE000-#xFFFD] | [#x10000-#x10FFFF]` // * any Unicode character, excluding the surrogate blocks, FFFE, and FFFF. Char = _{ "\u{0009}" | "\u{000A}" | "\u{000D}" | '\u{0020}'..'\u{D7FF}' | '\u{E000}'..'\u{FFFD}' | '\u{10000}'..'\u{10FFFF}' }

XML’s EBNF encodes character ranges in square brackets ( [] ), with the first character of the range followed by a hyphen ( - ), and then the last character of the range.

Pest represents the same range as enclosing the first character in the range in single quotes ( ' ), followed by two periods ( .. ), then the last character of the range in single quotes ( ' ), like so: 'a'..'z' , which can be interpreted as “match any character that exist in the range from lowercase a to lowercase z , inclusive”.

A character range is a type of alternation - it basically means “check if it matches the first option, and if it matches, accept that option and proceed to processing the next item in the sequence”. The more general form of alternation uses the pipe character ( | ). This is true of both EBNF and pest.

The final interesting thing to note here is that the xml spec specifies character literals using either a hexadecimal representation of its unicode value ( #xA - the “line feed” control character), or just putting the prescribed character inside single quotes ( ' ) for standard ascii characters. Pest is similar, but using rust-y notation for unicode literals - \u{<hexadecimal>} , for example, rendering the spec’s #x9 in pest as \u{0009} (leading zeroes added for clarity in alignment, and not because they’re required).

You may also note that the opening curly brace for my Char production in pest is preceded by an underscore ( _ ). That tells pest not to emit a unique token for each Char that it parses. The Char s will still be parsed, they’ll just be returned as part of other productions that are built up using Char in them.

Side note

Pest has a really neat playground for testing out production rules and seeing what tokens they emit.

Go ahead and copy the following into the editor:

Char = _{ "\u{0009}" | "\u{000A}" | "\u{000D}" | '\u{0020}'..'\u{D7FF}' | '\u{E000}'..'\u{FFFD}' | '\u{10000}'..'\u{10FFFF}' } S = _{ "\u{0020}" | "\u{0009}" | "\u{000D}" | "\u{000A}" } Word = { (!S ~ Char)* } Words = { Word ~ (S ~ Word)* }

Feel free to play around with it. Try removing the leading underscores ( _ ) on the Char and S productions. The Word production basically says a word is any sequence of characters that isn’t a whitespace char, and Words one or more Word s separated by one or more spaces.

Character Classes

Character classes are another form of alternation, typically represented in EBNF as [<sequence of individual characters>] , e.g. [%&] , which is represented in pest as "%" | "&" .

An interesting wrinkle on this concept is to say [^<sequence>] , which means “any character that is not in this sequence”. The translation of this concept to pest is more complicated, and requires introducing a new concept – the ! operator. The ! operator indicates that a particular pattern must not match at the current position, and then the parser will continue matching the next pattern starting from that same position.

So what does that mean here? A character class [^%&] means any character that is neither % nor & , so we’d write that in pest as !("%" | "&") ~ ANY . ANY is a built-in production in pest that matches any single character, although you could substitute more limited alternatives here, for example, the Char production from the xml spec, which would instead suggest “any allowable character that’s neither % nor & ”.

To see this in action, let’s look at the EntityValue production from the spec:

// [9](https://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-xml-20081126/#NT-EntityValue) // `EntityValue ::= '"' ([^%&"] | PEReference | Reference)* '"' | "'" ([^%&'] | PEReference | Reference)* "'"` EntityValue = { ("\"" ~ ( (!("%" | "&" | "\"") ~ Char) | PEReference | Reference)* ~ "\"") | ("'" ~ ( (!("%" | "&" | "'") ~ Char) | PEReference | Reference)* ~ "'") }

To put this production into plain english, an EntityValue is a sequence of characters enclosed in matching single- or double-quotes, and inside the quotes is a sequence/combination of zero or more non-‘%’ and non-‘&’ characters, PEReferences , and References .

“And Not” Sequences

In EBNF, to express the idea that a general pattern should match at the current position, but another pattern should not, that’s written as A - B ( A matches and B doesn’t). Pest expresses this same idea as !B ~ A .

We can see a very simple example of this here:

// # Comments // [15](https://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-xml-20081126/#NT-Comment) // `Comment ::= '<!--' ((Char - '-') | ('-' (Char - '-')))* '-->'` // Pest expresses A - B syntax instead as !B ~ A Comment = { "<!--" ~ ( (!"-" ~ Char) | ("-" ~ (!"-" ~ Char)))* ~ "-->" }

The EBNF subsequence (Char - '-') means “match an allowable character, but not if it matches ‘-‘”. The associated pest expression instead says “check if the current position matches ‘-‘, and if it’s not then match an allowable character.”

We can see a more complicated example of this:

// # Processing Instructions // [16](https://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-xml-20081126/#NT-PI) // `PI ::= '<?' PITarget (S (Char* - (Char* '?>' Char*)))? '?>'` // Pest expresses A - B syntax instead as !B ~ A PI = { "<?" ~ PITarget ~ (S ~ (!(Char* ~ "?>" ~ Char*) ~ Char*))? ~ "?>" }

Look at how the EBNF subsequence (Char* - (Char* '?>' Char*))) was converted to (!(Char* ~ "?>" ~ Char*) ~ Char*)) .

Wrapping Up

Once I had all these pieces in place, I promptly went searching the internet for interesting xml documents to test my lexer against. It wasn’t long before I encountered one that was failing to lex in spite of looking valid:

<?xml version = "1.0" encoding = "utf-8"?> <!-- xslplane.1.xml --> <?xml-stylesheet type = "text/xsl" href = "xslplane.1.xsl" ?> <plane> <year> 1977 </year> <make> Cessna </make> <model> Skyhawk </model> <color> Light blue and white </color> </plane>

At first I thought the problem was with my lexer - it took me awhile to see what was wrong with this document. Specifically, production 17 says the name that immediately follows a ‘<?’ (opening of a Processing Instruction token) cannot begin with the sequence ‘XML’ or ‘xml’:

[17] PITarget ::= Name - (('X' | 'x') ('M' | 'm') ('L' | 'l'))

In fact, it has this specific language to clarify the point:

The target names “XML”, “xml”, and so on are reserved for standardization in this or future versions of this specification. The XML Notation mechanism may be used for formal declaration of PI targets. Parameter entity references must not be recognized within processing instructions.

Representing all 83 productions in the xml spec took me less than a day, with about a quarter of that time spent just copying the productions from the spec into comments in my pest file, and adding markup to them.

So, all in all, a day well spent. Now I just need to finish defining and exposing my API and expanding coverage of my unit and integration tests.