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nonassoc in ocamlyacc #5462

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vicuna opened this issue Jan 3, 2012 · 6 comments
Closed

nonassoc in ocamlyacc #5462

vicuna opened this issue Jan 3, 2012 · 6 comments

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@vicuna
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vicuna commented Jan 3, 2012

Original bug ID: 5462
Reporter: @mlasson
Assigned to: @protz
Status: closed (set by @xavierleroy on 2013-08-31T10:46:06Z)
Resolution: won't fix
Priority: low
Severity: minor
Version: 3.12.0
Category: ~DO NOT USE (was: OCaml general)
Monitored by: @protz mehdi

Bug description

Hello,

The behavior of nonassoc is not clear to me.

The documentation of yacc says :
"A shift/reduce conflict between a rule and a token with the same precedence will be resolved using the associativity: if the token is left-associative, then the parser will reduce; if the token is right-associative, then the parser will shift. If the token is non-associative, then the parser will declare a syntax error."

On a simple example (see "Steps To Reproduce"), if I declare a binary operator to be non associative, I get no warning and the generated parser seems to behave like the operator was left associative and raises no exception.

It looks like a bug but I may also have misunderstood the keyword nonassoc.

I've tested it on 3.12 and 3.00.
I join archive for observing this behavior.
One just need to untar it and compile with "ocamlbuild main.native" and execute "echo 2+2+2 | ./main.native".

Thank you,
Marc.

Steps to reproduce

%{
%}

/* File parser.mly /
%token INT
%token PLUS
%token LPAREN RPAREN
%token EOL
%nonassoc PLUS
%start main /
the entry point */
%type main
%%
main:
expr EOL { $1 }
;
expr:
INT { $1 }
| LPAREN expr RPAREN { $2 }
| expr PLUS expr { $1 + $3 }
;

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@vicuna
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vicuna commented Jan 4, 2012

Comment author: @mlasson

Actually it seems to be a bug in Berkeley Yacc (byacc)
from which the code of ocamlyacc is adapted.

I join a new file parser.y which will present the same
behavior with byacc and succeed to recognize a syntax
error when invoked with bison.

If you want to test it, you just need to execute :

  • For byacc:
    byacc parser.y && gcc y.tab.c && echo "2+2+2" | ./a.out
    which will output 6

  • For bison:
    bison parser.y && gcc parser.tab.c && echo "2+2+2" | ./a.out
    which will fail as we expect.

After a quick search, it seems that noone is complaining
about this bug of Berkeley Yacc on the internet.

@vicuna
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vicuna commented Jan 23, 2012

Comment author: @protz

Hi,

Thanks for reporting. This is indeed a bug in ocamlyacc. However, we're not actively developing ocamlyacc. It is only kept for the sake of compiling ocaml itself. Menhir http://cristal.inria.fr/~fpottier/menhir/menhir.html.en is a modern, efficient parser generator. It is the recommended solution for writing parsers now.

This particular bug has been fixed this morning in menhir's latest release.

Cheers,

jonathan

@vicuna
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vicuna commented Jan 23, 2012

Comment author: mehdi

What if one day the fix is need by OCaml itself?

Besides, if ocamlyacc is being obsoleted by upstream if favour of Menhir, then it has to be announced or advertized somewhere. (on caml-list and a note in OCaml's manual). Apologies if I missed that announcement.

@vicuna
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vicuna commented Jan 23, 2012

Comment author: @protz

Yes, changing the ocaml manual to reflect this fact is on my todo list, as well as writing a short "getting started with menhir" tutorial to be part of the main ocaml manual. When it's done, I'll announce that to the caml-list.

The conflict is very, very specific, and I'm pretty sure we're not about to hit that anytime soon in ocaml :).

@vicuna
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vicuna commented Jan 23, 2012

Comment author: mehdi

Thanks. I think that Menhir's manual would do the job (as it is well written and rather short) but ymmv.

I agree that it is a specific issue. It is just the "if the fix exists, why don't you apply it?" feeling but anyway…

Regards

@vicuna
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vicuna commented Jan 23, 2012

Comment author: @protz

Well I don't think anyone owns ocamlyacc anymore, and I don't think anyone wants to hack on it. But of course, if anyone were to provide a patch, we would most certainly accept it.

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