Pratt parser implementation in Go for parsing mathematical equations

The core implementation details follows the advice by Bob Nystrom detailed in his article on Pratt parsing

My notes on Pratt parsing and this project can be found here.

chris hopes to allow for user input mathematical equations that can be parsed and compiled into valid Go functions that can be used with plotting libraries in Go like gonum/plot. However, there are many other ways to use such a library.

chris supports most mathematical equations that Desmos supports. Additional operators will be added down the line. To view the current operators, refer here.

1   2 * 3               := 1   (2 * 3)
sin(pi/4)               := sin((pi/4))
2^x   cos(pi/4   15)    := (2^x)   cos(((pi/4)   15))

To use chris in your own project, download it as a package in Go modules:

go get github.com/woojiahao/chris

To set up a basic compiler, we will use both the lexer and parser modules. The lexer generates the token stream and the parser will be able to parse that token stream into a given Abstract Syntax Tree (AST). For more information about the roles of either component, refer below.

lexer receives a keyword and constant list to determine how these tokens are tokenized.

parser only requires the lexer to generate the AST. To retrieve the AST, we simply call parser#Parse.

package compiler

import (
	"fmt"
	"github.com/woojiahao/chris/pkg/lexer"
	"github.com/woojiahao/chris/pkg/parser"
)

type Compiler struct {
	l *lexer.Lexer
	p *parser.Parser
}

func New(exp string) *Compiler {
	keywords := []string{"sin", "cos", "tan", "csc", "sec", "cot"}
	constants := []string{"pi"}
	l := lexer.New(exp, keywords, constants)
	p := parser.New(l)

	// Parse expression and get AST. We ignore the err for now
	ast, _ := p.Parse()
	fmt.Printf("AST: %v\n", ast)

	return &Compiler{l, p}
}

Refer to example/ for a sample compiler which parses the equation and generates a function of type func(float64) float64 that can be used in plotting libraries like gonum/plot.

The general architecture of a programming language compiler can be found here:

flowchart LR
    Lexer-->Parser-->Compiler

1. Lexer - acts as an iterator over a given expression and converts each character/word into a given token. It ignores whitespaces and will parse numbers and words as a whole chunk.

2. Parser - reads the token stream from a given Lexer and applies grammar to the tokens to generate an AST tree. It is not responsible for checking if the keywords are valid. It just needs to know that the expression can generate a valid AST tree.

3. Compiler - receives the generated AST tree from the Parser and performs operations on the given AST tree and the respective nodes. chris, however is not a compiler, but a parser, so it will not compile the given AST.

Parser logic is performed by something known as "Parselets". Effectively, they are the components that handles behavior of each token. This is slightly different to having functions per non-terminal character in our grammar.

We have two kinds of parselets, prefix and infix. Prefix parselets are what can start an independent sub-expression like numbers, ( or variables, while infix parselets require a left and right sub-expression to generate a node.

# chris BNF
# General terminals
<digit>         ::= '0' | ... | '9'
<letter>        ::= 'a' | ... | 'z'
                | 'A' | ... | 'Z'

# Terminals in chris
<number>        ::= <digit> 
                | <digit>'.'<digit>
                | <number><digit>
<variable>      ::= <letter>
<keyword>       ::= <letter> 

# Non-terminals
<operator>      ::= ' ' | '-' | '*' | '/' | '^'
<unary>         ::= '-'
<expression>    ::= <number>
                | <variable>
                | <keyword> 
                | <unary> <expression> 
                | <expression> <operator> <expression> 
                | <expression> <expression> 
                | <function call> 
                | <group>
<function call> ::= <keyword> '(' <expression>* ')'
<group>         ::= '(' <expression> ')'
<assignment>    ::= <variable> '=' <expression>