polyparse

What is polyparse?
How do I use it?
Downloads
Recent news
Contacts
Related Work

What is polyparse?

polyparse is a collection of parser combinator libraries in Haskell. It is distributed as a package, but you are likely to use only one of the included modules at any one time - they have almost identical APIs and in general they are alternatives to each other.

Polyparsers are both applicative and monadic. The applicative style is most useful with context-free grammars, since it avoids the need to name intermediate structures, and is very close to a BNF specification. For a context sensitive grammar, the monadic style is needed: preserving some context means binding it to a name.

The name polyparse comes from the polymorphic ability to feed any interesting type as input to the parsers, not just a list of characters. It does not even need to be a list of tokens - a ByteString, or tree structure, will do just as well. For instance, the HaXml package uses polyparsers at three different levels: (1) taking an unlexed string and parsing it to an XPath query; (2) in conjunction with a hand-written lexer, parsing a list of tokens to a generic XML tree structure; and (3) taking the generic XML tree structure as input and further parsing it into typed Haskell values.

In addition to its fully polymorphic parsers, polyparse also includes a replacement for the Haskell standard Read class: Text.Parse takes strings as input and parses values of Haskell datatypes, matching the format generated by the standard Show class. This includes for instance, different kinds of numeric parser (Ints, Doubles, Hex), character and string literals (dealing with escapes), and support for dealing with constructors, named fields, infix operators, and so on. The benefits of using Text.Parse over Read are: it is much more efficient; and you get decent error messages when a parse fails.

If you have only ever used the parsec combinators before, then you might be pleasantly surprised by polyparse: all of the same functionality is available, but it removes the confusion that all too commonly arises from a failure to use parsec's try combinator correctly. Ambiguous grammars often fail to be compositional in parsec, and it can be a black art guessing where to introduce a try to fix it. In contrast, polyparsers are by default fully compositional. It is possible to improve their efficiency (and the accuracy of error messages) by inserting commits (which are the dual of try), but it is not necessary for writing a correct parser, and furthermore, it is usually obvious where it can be beneficial to add a commit.

All the Poly* variations share the same basic API, so it is easy to switch from one set to another, when you discover you need an extra facility, just by changing a single import.


How do I use it?

Detailed documentation of the polyparse APIs is generated automatically by Haddock directly from the source code.

In general, you can just add an import of the relevant module to your source code, and everything should just compile OK. However, if the package is not 'exposed' (in ghc-pkg terminology), then you might need to use a command-line option --package polyparse at compile time.

The original Hutton/Meijer combinators are described in a very nice tutorial tech report: NOTTCS-TR-96-4

I wrote some motivation for Text.Parse (including simple examples) on my blog a while back. Here is the posting.

If you are familiar with the Parsec library, then the key insight for using PolyParse is that the two libraries' approach to backtracking are the duals of each another. In Parsec, you must explicitly add a try combinator at any location where backtracking might be necessary. Users often find this a bit of a black art. In PolyParse by contrast, all parsers are backtracking unless you explicitly add a commit (or one of its variations). It is easy to tell where to add a commit point, because you have already parsed enough of a data structure to know that only one outcome is possible. For instance, if you are parsing a Haskell value produced by 'show', then as soon as you have parsed the initial constructor, you know that no other constructor of that datatype is possible, so you can commit to returning it.

User-contributed documentation for polyparse is on the Haskell wiki at: http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Polyparse Please edit the wiki if you discover any nice tricks!

Known problems:


Downloads

Development version:

darcs get http://code.haskell.org/polyparse

Current released version:
polyparse-1.12, release date 2016.04.12
By HTTP: Hackage,

Older versions:
polyparse-1.11, release date 2015.01.01
By HTTP: Hackage.
polyparse-1.10, release date 2014.10.28
By HTTP: Hackage.
polyparse-1.9, release date 2013.05.15
By HTTP: .tar.gz, .zip.
polyparse-1.8, release date 2012.03.09
By HTTP: .tar.gz, .zip.
polyparse-1.7, release date 2011.06.26
By HTTP: .tar.gz, .zip.
polyparse-1.6, release date 2011.05.22
By HTTP: .tar.gz, .zip.
polyparse-1.5, release date 2011.01.07
By HTTP: .tar.gz, .zip.
polyparse-1.4.1, release date 2010.05.29
By HTTP: .tar.gz, .zip.
polyparse-1.4, release date 2009.12.10
By HTTP: .tar.gz, .zip.
polyparse-1.3, release date 2009.03.09
By HTTP: .tar.gz, .zip.
polyparse-1.2, release date 2009.03.04
By HTTP: .tar.gz, .zip.
polyparse-1.1, release date 2007.10.23
By HTTP: .tar.gz, .zip.
polyparse-1.0, release date 2007.01.26
By HTTP: .tar.gz, .zip.
All older versions by FTP: ftp://ftp.cs.york.ac.uk/pub/haskell/polyparse/


Installation

To install polyparse, you must have a Haskell compiler: ghc-6.2 or later, and/or nhc98-1.16/hmake-3.06 or later, and/or Hugs98 (Sept 2003) or later. For more recent compilers, use the standard Cabal method of installation:

    cabal install polyparse
or
    runhaskell Setup.hs configure [--prefix=...] [--buildwith=...]
    runhaskell Setup.hs build
    runhaskell Setup.hs install
For older compilers, use:
    sh configure [--prefix=...] [--buildwith=...]
    make
    make install
to configure, build, and install polyparse as a package for your compiler(s). If you don't use the --prefix option, you may need write permission on the library installation directories of your compiler(s). Afterwards, to gain access to the polyparse libraries, you only need to add the option -package polyparse to your compiler commandline (no option required for Hugs).

Recent news

Version 1.12 contains a fix for lexing escaped chars inside a literal string in the "word" parser. It also changes the semantics of "parseLitChar" so that it no longer expects surrounding single quotes. A version that does consume surrounding single quotes is now provided under the name parseLitChar'. The new behaviour of parseLitChar matches Haskell's lexLitChar specification, from which it was derived.

Version 1.11 contains only a fix for the Applicative/Monad/Functor classes rearrangement in ghc-7.10.*

Version 1.10 adds a new text combinator "literal", as a replacement for "isWord", when the string to be accepted should not be lexed as Haskell, for instance if it contains spaces or mixed alpha/symbols. Also fixes the implementation of "manyFinally", and adds a new combinator "satisfyMsg" which has a string describing the predicate, in order to produce more informative error messages.

Version 1.9 changes the semantics of Text.Parse.bracket, now allowing backtracking if the closing bracket parser fails. If you want the old behaviour, you can add a "commit" to the closing bracket parser at the use-site.

Version 1.8 fixes the ByteString API to return Word8 instead of Char, whilst retaining the old API as ByteStringChar.

Version 1.7 fixes imports for forward compatibility with ghc-7.

Version 1.6 exposes a Data.Text variant of the parser combinators, based loosely on the ByteString variant.

Version 1.5 has a reasonably large internal API change - moving lots of code around between modules in an attempt to rationalise the amount of cut-n-paste copies. It also adopts the standard Applicative and Alternative classes, whilst additionally retaining the previous names (apply, discard, onFail) for those methods. Users should see little change, unless they define their own instances of the PolyParse class.

Version 1.4.1 has two minor bugfixes: for `discard`, especially in the Lazy variant, and for 'optionalParens' in Text.Parse.

Version 1.4 has several bugfixes, improvements, and API additions. See the complete changelog
for fuller details. The main headline is new ByteString functionality.

Version 1.3 has a single bugfix: Text.Parse.parseFloat now accepts ordinary floating point notation, in addition to scientific (exponent) notation.

Version 1.2 improves the Text.Parse implementation significantly. Where previously all the parsers for builtin basic datatype (Int,Float,Char) were just thin wrappers over the H'98 Read instances, now they are all proper parsers, therefore they should (a) be faster; (b) give better error messages.

Version 1.1 much improves the laziness characteristics of the Poly* combinators. There are also a lot of new implementations of the Poly* parser types, all of which attempt to preserve exactly the same combinator interface, so it is easy to switch between them.

Version 1.00 is the first release of polyparse as a separate package. It was previously part of the HaXml suite. HaXml continues to use polyparse, but polyparse will be useful more widely. If you are looking for examples of the usage of polyparse, the implementations of Text.XML.HaXml.Parse, Text.XML.HaXml.ParseLazy, and Text.XML.HaXml.XmlContent are good places to look.
Complete Changelog


Contacts

We are interested in hearing your feedback on these parser combinators - suggestions for improvements, comments, criticisms, bug reports. Please mail

Licence: The library is Free and Open Source Software, i.e., the bits we wrote are copyright to us, but freely licensed for your use, modification, and re-distribution, provided you don't restrict anyone else's use of it. The polyparse library is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public Licence (LGPL) - see file LICENCE-LGPL for more details. We allow one special exception to the LGPL - see COPYRIGHT. (If you don't like any of these licensing conditions, please contact us to discuss your requirements.)


Related work