NAME

Ωη;)XD - OMeta for Winxed

DESCRIPTION

Ωη;)XD (pronounced ohm-eta-wink-kzd) is an OMeta implementation using Winxed as a host language.

OMeta

OMeta is an object-oriented language for pattern matching, based on Parsing Expression Grammars (PEG), but generalized to arbitrary ordered iterable containers. It supports left-recursion through packrat memoization, except in cases where such memoization would be costly for little gain; specifically, parent-rule and parameterized-rule applications are not memoized and do not support left-recursion.

Winxed

Winxed is a programming language targetting the Parrot Virtual Machine. It maps fairly closely to the underlying VM semantics while providing a JavaScript-like syntax.

Usage

Command Line Use

Ωη;)XD programs and modules can be compiled down to Winxed or executed directly using the Ωη tool.

# directly execute
> Ωη mygrammar.Ωη

# compile a grammar to winxed
> Ωη -o mygrammar.winxed mygrammar.Ωη

# more options exist
> Ωη --help

Programmatic Use

Ωη;)XD grammars are compiled to classes which must be instantiated to be used for matching. Matching is done via the match and matchAll methods which take for arguments a rule name, an input, and optionally rule parameters and a failed match handler function. Results are returned, failures raise exceptions.

match and matchAll differ in how they treat their inputs. matchAll expects an iterable input to match against directly, while match will wrap its argument in an iterable object before attempting the match.

Here is an example Winxed program that uses an Ωη;)XD grammar.

function main(var argv) {
  using extern mygrammar;  // pre-compiled grammar

  var grammar = new MyGrammar();

  // match some simple rules
  try { grammar.matchAll('StringRule', "Test String"); } catch (e) { say("Oops match failed"); }
  try { grammar.matchAll('ListRule',   [ '+', 1, 2 ]); } catch (e) { say("Oops match failed"); }

  // these two are the same
  try { grammar.matchAll('ListRule',   [ 'Test String' ]); } catch (e) { say("Oops match failed"): }
  try { grammar.match(   'ListRule',     'Test String'  ); } catch (e) { say("Oops match failed"); }
}

Here is a sample grammar that might be used in the previous example.

ometa MyGrammar {
    StringRule = 'Test String',
    ListRule   = [ '+' digit+ ]
               | [ StringRule ]
}

Differences from OMeta/JS

Since Winxed is a different language from JavaScript, there are some slight differences between the Winxed and JavaScript implementations of OMeta. Some of the most important differences are listed below:

State

In JavaScript, methods, fields, and associative-array access share the same slots which are vivified on assignment. In Winxed, methods, fields, and associative-array access are disjoint, methods are not assignable, and assignment to missing fields causes an exception.

Therefore, the recommended means of tracking state in the Winxed implementation is to use associative-array access exclusively. Names can be chosen arbitrarily without fear that these will conflict with rule names, or the underlying workings of the grammar.

Concatenation

In Winxed, as in JavaScript, string concatenation is done via the '+' operator. The difference, however is that while JavaScript overloads this operator dynamically, Winxed overloads this operator statically. To achieve string concatenation in stead of numeric addition, variables often must be coerced to strings (using the string() builtin) before concatenation.

SEE ALSO

Winxed http://winxed.org

Parrot VM http://parrot.org

OMeta http://tinlizzie.org/ometa/

OMeta/JS http://github.com/alexwarth/ometa-js/

LICENSE

Copyright (c) 2010-2011 Peter Lobsinger <[email protected]>

Copyright (c) 2007-2010 Alessandro Warth <[email protected]>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.