Crate plexer

Pattern matching LEXER¹ implementation.

Principle

This lexer is making use of the Pattern trait to find tokens.
The idea is to create Tokens, explain how to match them with a Pattern and build them from the matched String value.

lexer!(
    // Ordered by priority
    NAME(optional types, ...) {
        impl Pattern => |value: String| -> Token,
        ...,
    },
    ...,
);

The lexer! macro generates module lexer which contains Token, LexerError, LexerResult and Lexer.

You can now call Token::tokenize to tokenize a &str, it should return a Lexer instance that implements Iterator.
Each iteration, the Lexer tries to match one of the given Pattern and returns a LexerResult<Token> built from the best match.

Example

Here is an example for a simple math lexer.

lexer!(
    // Different operators
    OPERATOR(char) {
        '+' => |_| Token::OPERATOR('+'),
        '-' => |_| Token::OPERATOR('-'),
        '*' => |_| Token::OPERATOR('*'),
        '/' => |_| Token::OPERATOR('/'),
        '=' => |_| Token::OPERATOR('='),
    },
    // Integer numbers
    NUMBER(usize) {
        |s: &str| s.chars().all(|c| c.is_digit(10))
            => |v: String| Token::NUMBER(v.parse().unwrap()),
    },
    // Variable names
    IDENTIFIER(String) {
        regex!(r"[a-zA-Z_$][a-zA-Z_$0-9]*")
            => |v: String| Token::IDENTIFIER(v),
    },
    WHITESPACE {
        [' ', '\n'] => |_| Token::WHITESPACE,
    },
);

That will expand to these enum and structs.

mod lexer {
    pub enum Token {
        OPERATOR(char),
        NUMBER(usize),
        IDENTIFIER(String),
        WHITESPACE,
    }

    pub struct Lexer {...}
    pub struct LexerError {...}
    pub type LexerResult<T> = Result<T, LexerError>;
}

And you can use them afterwards.

use lexer::*;

let mut lex = Token::tokenize("x_4 = 1 + 3 = 2 * 2");
assert_eq!(lex.nth(2), Some(Ok(Token::OPERATOR('='))));
assert_eq!(lex.nth(5), Some(Ok(Token::NUMBER(3))));

// Our lexer doesn't handle parenthesis...
let mut err = Token::tokenize("x_4 = (1 + 3)");
assert!(err.nth(4).is_some_and(|res| res.is_err()));

---

1. More details on Lexical analysis. ↩

Modules

• pattern
  Module for Pattern matching.

Macros

• lexer
  Macro to build your own plugin-based lexer.
• regex
  Macro to build a Regex.