Generating Spirit parser expressions from a variadic list of alternative parser expressions

Thank you for a quick hint! I’ve just tried your code and unless I do something wrong … I get this output: Syntax error:abc 8.81 Parsed:-a atoken Syntax error:-b btoken Syntax error:-c ctoken Syntax error:-d dtoken – G. Civardi 2 hours ago

Okay, so, I couldn’t leave it alone :/

Turns out there was Undefined Behaviour involved, because of the way in which parser expressions were being passed to expandBitwise and being copied: Boost Proto expression templates weren’t designed to be copied as they may contain references to temporaries, whose lifetime ends at the end of their containing full-expression.

See for more background, the discussion at Zero to 60 MPH in 2 seconds!

After a long (long) time of tweaking with rule_.alias() and boost::proto::deepcopy I have reached the following solution (which, incidentally, doesn’t need a helper function at all, anymore):

template<typename ...Tail>
void mparse(const std::string& line,Tail& ...tail)
{
    auto parser = boost::fusion::fold(
                boost::tie(ph::bind(&TStruct::rule_, arg1)(tail)...),
                qi::eps(false),
                deepcopy_(arg2 | arg1)
            );

    auto f=begin(line), l=end(line);

    if( qi::phrase_parse(f, l, parser, ascii::space ) )
        std::cout << "Parsed:" << line << std::endl;
    else
        std::cout << "Syntax error:" << line << std::endl;

    if (f!=l)
        std::cout << "Remaining unparsed: '" << std::string(f,l) << "'\n";
}

The protection against UB is the deepcopy_() invocation, which is a trivial polymorphic callable adaptor for boost::proto::deepcopy:

struct DeepCopy
{
    template<typename E> struct result { typedef typename boost::proto::result_of::deep_copy<E>::type type; };

    template<typename E>
        typename result<E>::type
        operator()(E const& expr) const {
            return boost::proto::deep_copy(expr);
        }
};

static const ph::function<DeepCopy> deepcopy_;

With this code, lo and behold, the output becomes:

Syntax error:abc 8.81
Remaining unparsed: 'abc 8.81'
Parsed:-a atoken
Parsed:-b btoken
Parsed:-c ctoken
Parsed:-d dtoken
Bye

As a bonus, the code now allows you to use Spirit’s builtin debug() capabilities (uncomment that line):

<-d>
  <try>abc 8.81</try>
  <fail/>
</-d>
<-c>
  <try>abc 8.81</try>
  <fail/>
</-c>
<-b>
  <try>abc 8.81</try>
  <fail/>
</-b>
<-a>
  <try>abc 8.81</try>
  <fail/>
</-a>
Syntax error:abc 8.81
Remaining unparsed: 'abc 8.81'

Tested with

• Boost 1_54_0
• GCC 4.7.2, 4.8.x, Clang 3.2
• Note the #defines which are significant.

FULL CODE

#define BOOST_RESULT_OF_USE_DECLTYPE
#define BOOST_SPIRIT_USE_PHOENIX_V3
#include <boost/fusion/adapted/boost_tuple.hpp>
#include <boost/fusion/include/fold.hpp>
#include <boost/spirit/include/qi.hpp>
#include <boost/spirit/include/phoenix.hpp>

namespace qi    = boost::spirit::qi;
namespace ph    = boost::phoenix;
namespace ascii = boost::spirit::ascii;
using namespace ph::arg_names;

typedef qi::rule<std::string::const_iterator,ascii::space_type> mrule_t;
typedef qi::rule<std::string::const_iterator,std::string() >    wrule_t;

struct TStruct
{
    mrule_t     rule_;
    template<typename T,typename R>
    TStruct( T& rVar,const std::string&name, R& rule ) :
        rule_( qi::lit(name) >> rule[ ph::ref(rVar) = qi::_1 ] )
    { 
        rule_.name(name);
        // debug(rule_);
    }
};

struct DeepCopy
{
    template<typename E> struct result { typedef typename boost::proto::result_of::deep_copy<E>::type type; };

    template<typename E>
        typename result<E>::type
        operator()(E const& expr) const {
            return boost::proto::deep_copy(expr);
        }
};

static const ph::function<DeepCopy> deepcopy_;

template<typename ...Tail>
void mparse(const std::string& line,Tail& ...tail)
{
    auto parser = boost::fusion::fold(
                boost::tie(ph::bind(&TStruct::rule_, arg1)(tail)...),
                qi::eps(false),
                deepcopy_(arg2 | arg1)
            );

    auto f=begin(line), l=end(line);

    if( qi::phrase_parse(f, l, parser, ascii::space ) )
        std::cout << "Parsed:" << line << std::endl;
    else
        std::cout << "Syntax error:" << line << std::endl;

    if (f!=l)
        std::cout << "Remaining unparsed: '" << std::string(f,l) << "'\n";
}

int main()
{
    wrule_t rword=+~ascii::space;

    std::string par1,par2,par3,par4;

    TStruct r1( par1, "-a", rword );
    TStruct r2( par2, "-b", rword );
    TStruct r3( par3, "-c", rword );
    TStruct r4( par4, "-d", rword );

    mparse("abc 8.81"   ,r1,r2,r3,r4);
    mparse("-a atoken"  ,r1,r2,r3,r4);
    mparse("-b btoken"  ,r1,r2,r3,r4);
    mparse("-c ctoken"  ,r1,r2,r3,r4);
    mparse("-d dtoken"  ,r1,r2,r3,r4);

    std::cout << "Bye\n";
}