From: Wil <iamwil@...>
Date: 2006-11-13T01:35:08+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby parsing in Ruby

Hrm, I remember stumbling over parsetree, and it seems like the classes
need to already exist in object/class space (at least from the example
that they give).  What if you just had a string of the source of the
classes?  Perhaps they're one in the same.  I should look at Parsetree
a little bit closer.

Wil


Timothy Goddard wrote:
> Wil wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I've been doing Ruby for a small while now, but I'm a newbie when it
> > comes to parsing.  I've been digging around, but still can't seem to
> > find the answer.  I was wondering if Ruby itself has classes that I can
> > use to parse ruby source code into a parse tree.
> >
> > My first inclination was to use Racc
> > (http://i.loveruby.net/en/projects/racc/), but I didn't want to have to
> > write the BNF(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus-Naur_form) for Ruby if I
> > didn't have to (maybe it's not that hard?).  I wasn't able to find a
> > library of BNF for different languages (including Ruby), so then I
> > started looking elsewhere.
> >
> > Both irb and ri probably use a Ruby parser of some sort, but looking at
> > the source code, it looked like each of them rolled their own.  I
> > wasn't able to dig out the ruby parsing functionality from either by
> > including what I thought were necessary code modules.
> >
> > What would be the easiest way to parse Ruby source into parse trees in
> > Ruby?  Thanks!
> >
> > Wil
>
> Take a look at parsetree. It should be able to do this quite happily
> and uses Ruby's own parser. This avoids compatibility issues.