Wednesday, March 04, 2009

jSuneido Progress

Yesterday I worked on re-implementing the database request and query parsers.

I got the request one done and a good portion of the query one. I'd hoped to finish it in one day, but I didn't quite make it. Probably another half day or so.

It slowed me down a bit trying to share code with the language lexer and parser, yet keep the code independent.

The only difference in the lexers is in the keywords. Unfortunately, there's no way (that I know of) to extend enums. Separate Token classes would have meant duplicating the common stuff - yuck!

Instead, I decided to make the lexer include both sets of keywords. The extra coupling is unfortunate, but I figure it's better than duplication.

Luckily, the way the parsers work, keywords are not "reserved". So it doesn't hurt either parser to have extra keywords. (It wouldn't have been hard to "enable" only ones needed in a particular case, but it would have been one more complication.)

I also ran into complications with generics. The parsers take a type parameter so they can be reused with different "generators" e.g. to generate code, or execute directly, or build a syntax tree. There's a lot of actions shared between the different parsers (e.g. for expressions). The parsers also call each other (e.g. queries call the expression parser) so the generators have to be type compatible. I ended up with code like:

But compared to some of the twisted C++ template code, it doesn't seem too bad.

(I ended up having to use an image for that line of code because Blogger kept getting messed up by the angle brackets, even if I entered them as & lt ; in Edit Html mode.)

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