Parser that preserves comments and recover from error

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I'm working on a GUI editor for a propriety config format. Basically the editor will parse the config file, display the object properties so that users can edit from GUI and then write the objects back to the file.

I've got the parse - edit - write part done, except for:

  • The parsed data structure only include object properties information, so comments and whitespaces are lost on write
  • If there is any syntax error, the rest of the file is skipped

How would you address these issues? What is the usual approach to this problem? I'm using Python and Parsec module https://pythonhosted.org/parsec/documentation.html, however and help and general direction is appreciated.

I've also tried Pylens (https://pythonhosted.org/pylens/), which is really close to what I need except it can not skip syntax errors.

pyparsing parsec parsing python
2 Answers

You asked about typical approaches to this problem. Here are two projects which tackle similar challenges to the one you describe:

sketch-n-sketch: "Direct manipulation" interface for vector images, where you can either edit the image-describing source language, or edit the image it represents directly and see those changes reflected in the source code. Check out the video presentation, it's super cool.

Boomerang: Using lenses to "focus" on the abstract meaning of some concrete syntax, alter that abstract model, and then reflect those changes in the original source.

Both projects have yielded several papers describing the approaches their authors took. As far as I can tell, the Lens approach is popular, where parsing and printing become the get and put functions of a Lens which takes a some source code and focuses on the abstract concept which that code describes.

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