# Parsing parenthesized numbers

OK, now we're all set to start making a LALRPOP grammar. Before we tackle full expressions, let's start with something simple -- really simple. Let's just start with parenthesized integers, like 123 or (123) or even (hold on to your hats) (((123))). Wow.

To handle this, we'll need to add a calculator1.lalrpop as shown below. Note: to make explaining things easier, this version is maximally explicit; the next section will make it shorter by employing some shorthands that LALRPOP offers.

use std::str::FromStr;

grammar;

pub Term: i32 = {
<n:Num> => n,
"(" <t:Term> ")" => t,
};

Num: i32 = <s:r"[0-9]+"> => i32::from_str(s).unwrap();


Let's look at this bit by bit. The first part of the file is the use statement and the grammar declaration. You'll find these at the top of every LALRPOP grammar. Just as in Rust, the use statement just brings names in scope: in fact, these use statements are just copied verbatim into the generated Rust code as needed.

A note about underscores and hygiene: LALRPOP generates its own names that begin with at least two leading underscores. To avoid conflicts, it will insert more underscores if it sees that you use identifiers that also have two underscores. But if you use glob imports that bring in names beginning with __, you may find you have invisible conflicts. To avoid this, don't use a glob (or define some other name with two underscores somewhere else).

Nonterminal declarations. After the grammar declaration comes a series of nonterminal declarations. This grammar has two nonterminals, Term and Num. A nonterminal is just a name that we give to something which can be parsed. Each nonterminal is then defined in terms of other things.

Let's start with Num, at the end of the file, which is declared as follows:

Num: i32 =
<s:r"[0-9]+"> => i32::from_str(s).unwrap();


This declaration says that the type of Num is i32. This means that when we parse a Num from the input text, we will produce a value of type i32. The definition of Num is <s:r"[0-9]+">. Let's look at this from the inside out. The notation r"[0-9]+" is a regex literal -- this is the same as a Rust raw string. (And, just as in Rust, you can use hashes if you need to embed quotes, like r#"..."..."#.) It will match against a string of characters that matches the regular expression: in this case, some number of digits. The result of this match will be a slice &'input str into the input text that we are parsing (no copies are made).

This regular expression is wrapped in angle brackets and labeled: <s:r"[0-9]+">. In general, angle brackets are used in LALRPOP to indicate the values that will be used by the action code -- that is, the code that executes when a Num is parsed. In this case, the string that matches the regular expression is bound to the name s, and the action code i32::from_str(s).unwrap() parses that string and creates an i32. Hence the result of parsing a Num is an i32.

OK, now let's look at the nonterminal Term:

pub Term: i32 = {
<n:Num> => n,
"(" <t:Term> ")" => t,
};


First, this nonterminal is declared as pub. That means that LALRPOP will generate a public struct (named, as we will see, TermParser) that you can use to parse strings as Term. Private nonterminals (like Num) can only be used within the grammar itself, not from outside.

The Term nonterminal has two alternative definitions, which is indicated by writing { alternative1, alternative2 }. In this case, the first alternative is <n:Num>, meaning that a term can be just a number; so 22 is a term. The second alternative is "(" <t:Term> ")", which indicates that a term can also be a parenthesized term; so (22) is a term, as is ((22)), ((((((22)))))), and so on.

Invoking the parser. OK, so we wrote our parser, how do we use it? For every nonterminal Foo declared as pub, LALRPOP will export a FooParser struct with a parse method that you can call to parse a string as that nonterminal. Here is a simple test that we've added to our main.rs file which uses this struct to test our Term nonterminal:


#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
#[macro_use] extern crate lalrpop_util;

lalrpop_mod!(pub calculator1); // synthesized by LALRPOP

#[test]
fn calculator1() {
assert!(calculator1::TermParser::new().parse("22").is_ok());
assert!(calculator1::TermParser::new().parse("(22)").is_ok());
assert!(calculator1::TermParser::new().parse("((((22))))").is_ok());
assert!(calculator1::TermParser::new().parse("((22)").is_err());
}
}


The full signature of the parse method looks like this:


#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
fn parse<'input>(&self, input: &'input str)
-> Result<i32, ParseError<usize,(usize, &'input str),()>>
//        ~~~  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
//         |                       |
// Result upon success             |
//                                 |
//             Error enum defined in the lalrpop_util crate
{
...
}
}