The parse tree evolves

The latest release to sourceforge includes the 1st pass of a full parse tree.
The parse tree classes are under:

 srcs/v2k/parser/tree

There are 133 .java source files there; no wonder it's taken a while.

NOTE: ANTLR does have (automatic) AST (Abstract Syntax Tree) building capability. However, I wanted to experience the very hands-on experience of crafting my own, for this project. Not to worry, there will be many more parsers, for many more DSLs to work on; and, automatic AST generation will be more efficient there.

There is a simple script

 > bin/ptree

Error: Must specify at least one "infile".
Usage: v2kparse [options] infile...

Options:

-I dir        Add dir (must be readable) to `include file search path.

-D name       Predefine name as a macro with value 1.

-D name=defn  Predefine name as a macro with value defn.

Those options are less friendly than the (more common) Verilog style options (as in bin/analyze; see earlier blogs); but useful for testing.

Examine the bin/analyze and bin/ptree script to see the latter simply defines the constant USEPT (use parse tree). This constant is detected in file srcs/v2k/parser/Parser.java and selects which sub-class of

  public abstract class ASTreeBase

to build the tree. There are 2 sub-classes:

1. v2k.parser.tree.basic.ParseTree
2. v2k.parser.tree.ParseTree

The 1st: tree.basic.ParseTree is used to build a simple tree which simply tracks module names and instances. That is used by the bin/analyze script to glean info appropriate for source file dependency tracking (described in earlier blogs.) The 2nd one: tree.ParseTree is used for full tree construction, as in the bin/ptree script.

So, get your hands dirty playing around with bin/ptree. And, if you embelish the bin/analyze script with use of the -DUSEPT argument to java, then you could also get a full-blown parse tree, and use the more standard Verilog command line arguments, too. However, since the analyze script also uses jruby hooks to generate usable output, by walking the basic.ParseTree, the jruby scripts would also have to be changed (since the API of the basic.ParseTree and (full) tree.ParseTree is slightly different).

The next phase of the project is to add elaboration...