Question

I am working with pyparsing and found it to be excellent for developing a simple DSL that allows me to extract data fields out of MongoDB and do simple arithmetic operations on them. I am now trying to extend my tools such that I can apply functions of the form Rank[Person:Height] to the fields and potentially include simple expressions as arguments to the function calls. I am struggling hard with getting the parsing syntax to work. Here is what I have so far:

# Define parser
expr = Forward()
integer = Word(nums).setParseAction(EvalConstant)
real = Combine(Word(nums) + "." + Word(nums)).setParseAction(EvalConstant)

# Handle database field references that are coming out of Mongo, 
# accounting for the fact that some fields contain whitespace
dbRef = Combine(Word(alphas) + ":" + Word(printables) + \
    Optional(" " + Word(alphas) + " " + Word(alphas)))
dbRef.setParseAction(EvalDBref)

# Handle function calls
functionCall = (Keyword("Rank") | Keyword("ZS") | Keyword("Ntile")) + "[" + expr + "]"
functionCall.setParseAction(EvalFunction)
operand =  functionCall | dbRef | (real | integer) 

signop = oneOf('+ -')
multop = oneOf('* /')
plusop = oneOf('+ -')

# Use parse actions to attach Eval constructors to sub-expressions
expr << operatorPrecedence(operand,
    [
     (signop, 1, opAssoc.RIGHT, EvalSignOp),
     (multop, 2, opAssoc.LEFT, EvalMultOp),
     (plusop, 2, opAssoc.LEFT, EvalAddOp),
    ])

My issue is that when I test a simple expression like Rank[Person:Height] I am getting a parse exception:

ParseException: Expected "]" (at char 19), (line:1, col:20)

If I use a float or arithmetic expression as the argument like Rank[3 + 1.1] the parsing works ok, and if I simplify the dbRef grammar so its just Word(alphas) it also works. Cannot for the life of me figure out whats wrong with my full grammar. I have tried rearranging the order of operands as well as simplifying the functionCall grammar to no avail. Can anyone see what I am doing wrong?

Once I get this working I would want to take a last step and introduce support for variable assignment in expressions ..

EDIT: Upon further testing, if I remove the printables from dbRef grammar, things work ok:

 dbRef = Combine(Word(alphas) + OneOrMore(":") + Word(alphanums) + \
      Optional("_" + Word(alphas)))

HOWEVER, if I add the character “-” to dbRef (which I need for DB fields like “Class:S-N”), the parser fails again. I think the “-” is being consumed by the signop in my operatorPrecedence?

Answer 1

What appears to happen is that the ] character at the end of your test string (Rank[Person:Height]) gets consumed as part of the dbRef token, because the portion of this token past the initial : is declared as being made of Word(printables) (and this character set, unfortunately includes the square brackets characters)

Then the parser tries to produce a functionCall but is missing the closing ] hence the error message.

A tentative fix is to use a character set that doesn’t include the square brackets, maybe something more explicit like:

dbRef = Combine(Word(alphas) + ":" + Word(alphas, alphas+"-_./") + \
    Optional(" " + Word(alphas) + " " + Word(alphas)))

Edit:
Upon closer look, the above is loosely correct, but the token hierarchy is wrong (e.g. the parser attempts to produce a functionCall as one operand of an an expr etc.)
Also, my suggested fix will not work because of the ambiguity with the - sign which should be understood as a plain character when within a dbRef and as a plusOp when within an expr. This type of issue is common with parsers and there are ways to deal with this, though I’m not sure exactly how with pyparsing.