Lex/Yacc for C#?

Question

Actually, maybe not full-blown Lex/Yacc. I'm implementing a command-interpreter front-end to administer a webapp. I'm looking for something that'll take a grammar definition and turn it into a parser that directly invokes methods on my object. Similar to how ASP.NET MVC can figure out which controller method to invoke, and how to pony up the arguments.

So, if the user types "create foo" at my command-prompt, it should transparently call a method:

private void Create(string id) { /* ... */ }

Oh, and if it could generate help text from (e.g.) attributes on those controller methods, that'd be awesome, too.

score 15 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 09 '15 at 12:04

15

I've done a couple of small projects with GPLEX/GPPG, which are pretty straightforward reimplementations of LEX/YACC in C#. I've not used any of the other tools above, so I can't really compare them, but these worked fine.

GPPG can be found here and GPLEX here.

That being said, I agree, a full LEX/YACC solution probably is overkill for your problem. I would suggest generating a set of bindings using IronPython: it interfaces easily with .NET code, non-programmers seem to find the basic syntax fairly usable, and it gives you a lot of flexibility/power if you choose to use it.

edited Jan 09 '15 at 12:04

Rangad

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answered Mar 31 '10 at 10:53

Andy Mortimer

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Just as a breadcrumb, GPPG can now be found at http://gppg.codeplex.com/ and GPLEX is http://gplex.codeplex.com/ – Bklyn Jun 03 '13 at 19:06
gppg is now available on GitHub https://github.com/ernstc/gppg and published to Nuget as YaccLexTools.Gppg (https://www.nuget.org/packages/YaccLexTools.Gppg) – Paul Wheeler Feb 17 '23 at 02:45

score 11 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 20 '18 at 16:27

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I'm not sure Lex/Yacc will be of any help. You'll just need a basic tokenizer and an interpreter which are faster to write by hand. If you're still into parsing route see Irony.

As a sidenote: have you considered PowerShell and its commandlets?

edited Feb 20 '18 at 16:27

Emyr

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answered Feb 12 '09 at 09:29

Anton Gogolev

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While basic tokenisers are quite easy to write -- I've done several over the years, they're still not free if someone's already done the work. Also, yes, I have considered PowerShell. I'm not familiar enough with it to decide if it's a good fit or not. – Roger Lipscombe Feb 12 '09 at 09:32
Would be nice to have C++CLI lex/yacc – Dmytro Oct 29 '16 at 05:19
The link to Irony is dead. – alex Feb 15 '18 at 18:14
Updated link, Irony is now on github. – Emyr Feb 20 '18 at 16:08

score 11 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 19 '09 at 14:34

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Also look at Antlr, which has C# support.

answered Mar 19 '09 at 14:34

Kris Erickson

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score 5 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 12 '09 at 09:36

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Still early CTP so can't be used in production apps but you may be interested in Oslo/MGrammar: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/oslo/

answered Feb 12 '09 at 09:36

KristoferA

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If anyone wonders, it's dead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_(Microsoft) & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M_(programming_language) – Athari Jul 12 '13 at 12:52
M was so nice. It’s a shame it died off. – Matthew Whited Jul 12 '20 at 01:37

score 4 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 21 '13 at 15:43

Jison is getting a lot of traction recently. It is a Bison port to javascript. Because of it's extremely simple nature, I've ported the jison parsing/lexing template to php, and now to C#. It is still very new, but if you get a chance, take a look at it here: https://github.com/robertleeplummerjr/jison/tree/master/ports/csharp/Jison

Tamas Ionut · Answer 6 · 2012-05-11T17:05:17.253

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Gardens Point Parser Generator here provides Yacc/Bison functionality for C#. It can be donwloaded here. A usefull example using GPPG is provided here

edited May 11 '12 at 17:05

answered May 11 '12 at 16:51

Tamas Ionut

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As for now, it is buggy -- it translates `noassoc` to `right` (so in short it accept the input which should be incorrect according to grammar). – greenoldman Dec 12 '12 at 20:38

score 3 · Answer 7 · answered Feb 12 '09 at 09:39

If you don't fear alpha software and want an alternative to Lex / Yacc for creating your own languages, you might look into Oslo. I would recommend you to sit through session recordings of sessions TL27 and TL31 from last years PDC. TL31 directly addresses the creation of Domain Specific Languages using Oslo.

score 3 · Answer 8 · answered Feb 12 '09 at 09:41

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Coco/R is a compiler generator with a .NET implementation. You could try that out, but I'm not sure if getting such a library to work would be faster than writing your own tokenizer.

http://www.ssw.uni-linz.ac.at/Research/Projects/Coco/

answered Feb 12 '09 at 09:41

rix0rrr

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score 3 · Answer 9 · answered Feb 12 '09 at 10:44

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I would suggest csflex - C# port of flex - most famous unix scanner generator.

answered Feb 12 '09 at 10:44

Bartek Szabat

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score 3 · Answer 10 · answered Mar 02 '09 at 03:22

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I believe that lex/yacc are in one of the SDKs already (i.e. RTM). Either Windows or .NET Framework SDK.

answered Mar 02 '09 at 03:22

Jonathan Parker

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Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SDK has MPLex and MPPG under VisualStudioIntegration\Tools\Bin – Simeon Pilgrim Jul 12 '09 at 22:09

score 1 · Answer 11 · answered Dec 12 '12 at 20:41

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Just for the record, implementation of lexer and LALR parser in C# for C#:

http://code.google.com/p/naive-language-tools/

It should be similar in use to Lex/Yacc, however those tools (NLT) are not generators! Thus, forget about speed.

answered Dec 12 '12 at 20:41

greenoldman

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Kieron · Answer 12 · 2009-02-12T09:44:04.863

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As Anton said, PowerShell is probably the way to go. If you do want a lex/ yacc implementation then Malcolm Crowe has a good set.

Edit: Direct Link to the Compiler Tools

edited Feb 12 '09 at 09:44

answered Feb 12 '09 at 09:31

Kieron

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Lex/Yacc for C#?

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