Crate source_span

This crate provides utilities to locate characters and ranges of characters (spans) in a source file. It also provides ways to print fragments of the source file with span informations, hints, errors, warning and notes, just like the rustc compiler.

Basic usage

This crate is designed as an incremental parsing utility. Its primary function is to keep track of the line and column position of each character in a character stream:

use source_span::Position;

let metrics = &source_span::DEFAULT_METRICS; // characters metrics
let mut pos = Position::new(0, 0);
let str = "Hello\nWorld!";

for c in str.chars() {
	// `pos` holds the position (line, column) of
	// the current character at all points.
	pos.shift(c, metrics)
}

Using the Span type, it is also possible to build ranges of characters.

let mut chars = "1 + (2 * 2) / 3".chars();
let mut pos = Position::new(0, 0);
while let Some(c) = chars.next() {
	if c == '(' {
		break
	}

	pos.shift(c, &metrics)
}

let mut span: Span = pos.into();

while let Some(c) = chars.next() {
	span.push(c, &metrics);

	if c == ')' {
		break
	}
}

// `span` now holds the beginning and end position of the `"(2 * 2)"` slice.

SourceBuffer

This crate provides a simple SourceBuffer buffer to index a character stream by character position.

use std::fs::File;
use source_span::{DEFAULT_METRICS, Position, SourceBuffer};

let file = File::open("examples/fib.txt").unwrap();
let chars = utf8_decode::UnsafeDecoder::new(file.bytes());
let metrics = DEFAULT_METRICS;
let buffer = SourceBuffer::new(chars, Position::default(), metrics);

buffer.at(Position::new(4, 2)); // get the character at line 4, column 2.

The SourceBuffer type works as a wrapper around a character iterator. It is lazy: new characters are pulled from the wrapped iterator and put in the buffer only when needed. It can be used to access characters at a specific cursor position (as seen above) or iterate a slice of the text using a Span:

for c in buffer.iter_span(span) {
    // do something.
}

Formatting

This crate also provides a way to format decorated text, highlighting portions of the source text using ASCII art. It can be used to produce outputs similar as the following:

1 |   fn main() {
  |  ___________^
2 | |     println!("Hello World!")
  | |              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ a string
3 | | }
  | |_^ a block

Each highlight is described by a span, can be associated to a label and drawn with a specific style (defining what characters and color to use to draw the lines).

Modules

fmt	Source text formatter with span highlights and notes.

Structs

DefaultMetrics	Default metrics infos.
Layout	Text layout.
Loc	Located data.
Position	Position in a source file (line and column).
SourceBuffer	Lazy string buffer that fills up on demand, can be iterated and indexed by character position.
Span	Span in a source file.

Statics

DEFAULT_METRICS

Default character metrics.

Traits

Metrics

Gives the size of each character and tab stop length.