boost/libs/spirit/doc/rationale.qbk

[/==============================================================================
    Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Joel de Guzman
    Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Hartmut Kaiser

    Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying
    file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)
===============================================================================/]

[section Rationale]

[heading Naming]

Why use the name "Spirit", "Qi" and "Karma"? Because xpressive names
have a better spirit, brings qi to your software and will enhance your
karma so they can heal your (con)fusion and make you wave like a phoenix
from the ashes. (Joachim Faulhaber)

[heading Type Erasure: From static to dynamic C++]

Rules straddle the border between static and dynamic C++. In effect, a
rule transforms compile-time polymorphism (using templates) into
run-time polymorphism (using virtual functions). This is necessary due
to C++'s inability to automatically declare a variable of a type deduced
from an arbitrarily complex expression in the right-hand side (rhs) of
an assignment. Basically, we want to do something like:

    T rule = an_arbitrarily_complex_expression;

without having to know or care about the resulting type of the
right-hand side (rhs) of the assignment expression. This can be done
with modern C++ 0x compilers using `auto`:

    auto rule = an_arbitrarily_complex_expression;

Apart from this, we also need a facility to forward declare an unknown
type:

    T rule;
    ...
    rule = a | b;

These limitations lead us to this implementation of rules. This comes at
the expense of the overhead of a type-erased call which is an indirect
function call that connot be inlined, once through each invocation of a
rule.

[heading Multiple declaration]

Some BNF variants allow multiple declarations of a rule. The
declarations are taken as alternatives. Example:

   r = a;
   r = b;

is equivalent to:

   r = a | b;

Spirit v1.3 allowed this behavior. However, the current version of
Spirit no longer allows this because experience shows that this behavior
leads to unwanted gotchas (for instance, it does not allow rules to be
held in containers). In the current release of Spirit, a second
assignment to a rule will simply redefine it. The old definition is
destructed. This follows more closely C++ semantics and is more in line
with what the user expects the rule to behave.

[heading Sequencing Syntax]

The comma operator as in `a, b` seems to be a better candidate,
syntax-wise. But then the problem is with its precedence. It has the
lowest precedence in C/C++, which makes it virtually useless.

Bjarne Stroustrup, in his article "Generalizing Overloading for C++2000"
talks about overloading whitespace. Such a feature would allow
juxtapositioning of parser objects exactly as we do in (E)BNF (e.g. a b
| c instead of a >> b | c). Unfortunately, the article was dated April
1, 1998. Oh well.

[heading Forward iterators]

In general, the expected iterator is at least a standard conforming
forward iterator. Forward iterators are needed for backtracking where
the iterator needs to be saved and restored later. Generally speaking,
Spirit is a backtracking parser. The implication of this is that at some
point, the iterator position will have to be saved to allow the parser
to backtrack to a previous point. Thus, for backtracking to work, the
framework requires at least a forward iterator.

There are remedies of course. In cases where we need to use input
iterators, you can use the __multi_pass__ iterator to make the forward
iterators.

Some parsers might require more specialized iterators (bi-directional or
even random access). Perhaps in the future, deterministic parsers when
added to the framework, will perform no backtracking and will need just
a single token lookahead, hence will require input iterators only.

[heading Exhaustive backtracking and greedy RD]

Spirit doesn't do exhaustive backtracking like regular expressions are
expected to. For example:

    *char_('a') >> char_('a');

will always fail to match because Spirit's Kleene star does not back off
when the rest of the rule fails to match.

Actually, there's a solution to this greedy RD problem. Such a scheme is
discussed in section 6.6.2 of Parsing Techniques: A Practical Guide. The
trick involves passing a tail parser (in addition to the scanner) to
each parser. The start parser will then simply be:

    start >> end;

(end is the start's tail).

Spirit is greedy --using straight forward, naive RD. It is certainly
possible to implement the fully backtracking scheme presented above, but
there will be also certainly be a performance hit. The scheme will
always try to match all possible parser paths (full parser hierarchy
traversal) until it reaches a point of certainty, that the whole thing
matches or fails to match.

[:Backtracking and Greedy RD

Spirit is quite consistent and intuitive about when it backtracks and to
where, although it may not be obvious to those coming from different
backgrounds. In general, any (sub)parser will, given the same input,
always match the same portion of the input (or fail to match the input
at all). This means that Spirit is inherently greedy. Spirit will only
backtrack when a (sub)parser fails to match the input, and it will
always backtrack to the next choice point upward (not backward) in the
parser structure. In other words abb|ab will match `"ab"`, as will
`a(bb|b)`, but `(ab|a)b` won't because the `(ab|a)` subparser will
always match the `'b'` after the `'a'` if it is available.

--Rainer Deyke]

This is the very nature of __peg__.

There's a strong preference on "simplicity with all the knobs when you
need them" approach, right now. On the other hand, the flexibility of
Spirit makes it possible to have different optional schemes available.
It might be possible to implement an exhaustive backtracking RD scheme
as an optional feature in the future.

[endsect]