How to handle escape sequences in string literals in ANTLR 3?

Question

I've been looking through the ANTLR v3 documentation (and my trusty copy of "The Definitive ANTLR reference"), and I can't seem to find a clean way to implement escape sequences in string literals (I'm currently using the Java target). I had hoped to be able to do something like:

fragment 
ESCAPE_SEQUENCE
    : '\\' '\'' { setText("'"); }
    ;

STRING  
    : '\'' (ESCAPE_SEQUENCE | ~('\'' | '\\'))* '\''
      { 
        // strip the quotes from the resulting token
        setText(getText().substring(1, getText().length() - 1));
      } 
    ;

For example, I would want the input token "'Foo\'s House'" to become the String "Foo's House".

Unfortunately, the setText(...) call in the ESCAPE_SEQUENCE fragment sets the text for the entire STRING token, which is obviously not what I want.

Is there a way to implement this grammar without adding a method to go back through the resulting string and manually replace escape sequences (e.g., with something like setText(escapeString(getText())) in the STRING rule)?

Answer 1

Here is how I accomplished this in the JSON parser I wrote.

STRING      
@init{StringBuilder lBuf = new StringBuilder();}
    :   
           '"' 
           ( escaped=ESC {lBuf.append(getText());} | 
             normal=~('"'|'\\'|'\n'|'\r')     {lBuf.appendCodePoint(normal);} )* 
           '"'     
           {setText(lBuf.toString());}
    ;

fragment
ESC
    :   '\\'
        (   'n'    {setText("\n");}
        |   'r'    {setText("\r");}
        |   't'    {setText("\t");}
        |   'b'    {setText("\b");}
        |   'f'    {setText("\f");}
        |   '"'    {setText("\"");}
        |   '\''   {setText("\'");}
        |   '/'    {setText("/");}
        |   '\\'   {setText("\\");}
        |   ('u')+ i=HEX_DIGIT j=HEX_DIGIT k=HEX_DIGIT l=HEX_DIGIT
                   {setText(ParserUtil.hexToChar(i.getText(),j.getText(),
                                                 k.getText(),l.getText()));}

        )
    ;

Answer 2

For ANTLR4, Java target and standard escaped string grammar, I used a dedicated singleton class : CharSupport to translate string. It is available in antlr API :

STRING          :   '"' 
                (   ESC  
                |   ~('"'|'\\'|'\n'|'\r') 
                )* 
                    '"' { 
                        setText( 
                            org.antlr.v4.misc.CharSupport.getStringFromGrammarStringLiteral(
                                getText()
                            )
                        ); 
                    }
                ;

As I saw in V4 documentation and by experiments, @init is no longer supported in lexer part!

Answer 3

Another (possibly more efficient) alternative is to use rule arguments:

STRING
@init { final StringBuilder buf = new StringBuilder(); }
:
    '"'
    (
    ESCAPE[buf]
    | i = ~( '\\' | '"' ) { buf.appendCodePoint(i); }
    )*
    '"'
    { setText(buf.toString()); };

fragment ESCAPE[StringBuilder buf] :
    '\\'
    ( 't' { buf.append('\t'); }
    | 'n' { buf.append('\n'); }
    | 'r' { buf.append('\r'); }
    | '"' { buf.append('\"'); }
    | '\\' { buf.append('\\'); }
    | 'u' a = HEX_DIGIT b = HEX_DIGIT c = HEX_DIGIT d = HEX_DIGIT { buf.append(ParserUtil.hexChar(a, b, c, d)); }
    );

Answer 4

I needed to do just that, but my target was C and not Java. Here's how I did it based on answer #1 (and comment), in case anyone needs something alike:

QUOTE   :      '\'';
STR
@init{ pANTLR3_STRING unesc = GETTEXT()->factory->newRaw(GETTEXT()->factory); }
        :       QUOTE ( reg = ~('\\' | '\'') { unesc->addc(unesc, reg); }
                        | esc = ESCAPED { unesc->appendS(unesc, GETTEXT()); } )+ QUOTE { SETTEXT(unesc); };

fragment
ESCAPED :       '\\'
                ( '\\' { SETTEXT(GETTEXT()->factory->newStr8(GETTEXT()->factory, (pANTLR3_UINT8)"\\")); }
                | '\'' { SETTEXT(GETTEXT()->factory->newStr8(GETTEXT()->factory, (pANTLR3_UINT8)"\'")); }
                )
        ;

HTH.