Tidyparse

The main goal of this project is to speed up the process of learning a new language by suggesting ways to fix source code.

Tidyparse expects two files in the same directory — one ending in *.tidy which contains the string to parse (with optional holes) and one ending in *.cfg which contains the grammar. If you provide a string containing holes, it will provide some suggestions inside a tool window on the right hand side (can be opened by pressing Shift twice in rapid succession and searching for Tidyparse. If the string contains no holes, it will print out the parse tree in Chomsky normal form.

Getting Started

To use this plugin, first clone the parent repository and initialize the submodule like so:

git clone https://github.com/breandan/tidyparse && \
cd tidyparse && \
git submodule update --init --recursive && \
./gradlew runIde

To launch IntelliJ IDEA with the plugin installed, run: ./gradlew runIde from the parent directory.

Open a new project, then create a root directory to store the grammar (*.cfg) and test cases (*.tidy).

To view the parse tree, press Shift twice in rapid succession and search for ?Tidyparse to open the tool window.

For example, create the following directory structure:

ocaml
├─── ocaml.tidy
└─── ocaml.cfg

The file ocaml.cfg can contain this grammar:

 S -> X
 X -> B | I | F | P
 P -> I O I
 F -> IF | BF
IF -> if B then I else I
BF -> if B then B else B
 O -> + | - | * | /
 I -> 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | IF
 B -> true | false | B BO B | ( B ) | BF
BO -> and | or

The file ocaml.tidy can contain this test case:

if true then if true then 1 else 2 else 3

This should produce the following output (in Chomsky normal form):

✅ Current line parses!
I
├── if
└── B.then.I.else.I
    ├── true
    └── then.I.else.I
        ├── then
        └── I.else.I
            ├── I
            │   ├── if
            │   └── B.then.I.else.I
            │       ├── true
            │       └── then.I.else.I
            │           ├── then
            │           └── I.else.I
            │               ├── 1
            │               └── else.I
            │                   ├── else
            │                   └── 2
            └── else.I
                ├── else
                └── 3

To view the grammar, test case and parse tree all together, the development environment may be configured as follows:

Screen Shot 2022-05-12 at 11 00 19 PM

Tidyparse also accepts holes (_) in the test case. Providing such a test case will suggest candidates that are consistent with the provided CFG.

Screen Shot 2022-05-12 at 10 54 52 PM

Notes

  • Currently, rendering is done on-the-fly but may not reflect the current state of the editor. To refresh the display, type an extra whitespace character.
  • The grammar is sensitive to whitespace characters. Each nonterminal must be separated by at least one whitespace character.
  • There is currently no lexical analysis. Each terminal in the grammar corresponds to a single token in text. All names must be specified in the grammar.

GitHub

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