How do you use parsec in a greedy fashion?

Question

In my work I come across a lot of gnarly sql, and I had the bright idea of writing a program to parse the sql and print it out neatly. I made most of it pretty quickly, but I r

Answer 1

Yeah, between might not work for what you're looking for. Of course, for your use case, I'd follow hammar's suggestion and grab an off-the-shelf SQL parser. (personal opinion: or, try not to use SQL unless you really have to; the idea to use strings for database queries was imho a historical mistake).

Note: I add an operator called <++> which will concatenate the results of two parsers, whether they are strings or characters. (code at bottom.)

First, for the task of parsing parenthesis: the top level will parse some stuff between the relevant characters, which is exactly what the code says,

parseParen = char '(' <++> inner <++> char ')'

Then, the inner function should parse anything else: non-parens, possibly including another set of parenthesis, and non-paren junk that follows.

parseParen = char '(' <++> inner <++> char ')' where
    inner = many (noneOf "()") <++> option "" (parseParen <++> inner)

I'll make the assumption that for the rest of the solution, what you want to do is analgous to splitting things up by top-level SQL keywords. (i.e. ignoring those in parenthesis). Namely, we'll have a parser that will behave like so,

Main> parseTest parseSqlToplevel "select asdf(select m( 2) fr(o)m w where n) from b where delete 4"
[(Select," asdf(select m( 2) fr(o)m w where n) "),(From," b "),(Where," "),(Delete," 4")]

Suppose we have a parseKw parser that will get the likes of select, etc. After we consume a keyword, we need to read until the next [top-level] keyword. The last trick to my solution is using the lookAhead combinator to determine whether the next word is a keyword, and put it back if so. If it's not, then we consume a parenthesis or other character, and then recurse on the rest.

-- consume spaces, then eat a word or parenthesis
parseOther = many space <++>
    (("" <$ lookAhead (try parseKw)) <|> -- if there's a keyword, put it back!
     option "" ((parseParen <|> many1 (noneOf "() \t")) <++> parseOther))

My entire solution is as follows

-- overloaded operator to concatenate string results from parsers
class CharOrStr a where toStr :: a -> String
instance CharOrStr Char where toStr x = [x]
instance CharOrStr String where toStr = id
infixl 4 <++>
f <++> g = (\x y -> toStr x ++ toStr y) <$> f <*> g

data Keyword = Select | Update | Delete | From | Where deriving (Eq, Show)

parseKw =
    (Select <$ string "select") <|>
    (Update <$ string "update") <|>
    (Delete <$ string "delete") <|>
    (From <$ string "from") <|>
    (Where <$ string "where") 
    "keyword (select, update, delete, from, where)"

-- consume spaces, then eat a word or parenthesis
parseOther = many space <++>
    (("" <$ lookAhead (try parseKw)) <|> -- if there's a keyword, put it back!
     option "" ((parseParen <|> many1 (noneOf "() \t")) <++> parseOther))

parseSqlToplevel = many ((,) <$> parseKw <*> (space <++> parseOther)) <* eof

parseParen = char '(' <++> inner <++> char ')' where
    inner = many (noneOf "()") <++> option "" (parseParen <++> inner)

edit - version with quote support

you can do the same thing as with the parens to support quotes,

import Control.Applicative hiding (many, (<|>))
import Text.Parsec
import Text.Parsec.Combinator

-- overloaded operator to concatenate string results from parsers
class CharOrStr a where toStr :: a -> String
instance CharOrStr Char where toStr x = [x]
instance CharOrStr String where toStr = id
infixl 4 <++>
f <++> g = (\x y -> toStr x ++ toStr y) <$> f <*> g

data Keyword = Select | Update | Delete | From | Where deriving (Eq, Show)

parseKw =
    (Select <$ string "select") <|>
    (Update <$ string "update") <|>
    (Delete <$ string "delete") <|>
    (From <$ string "from") <|>
    (Where <$ string "where") 
    "keyword (select, update, delete, from, where)"

-- consume spaces, then eat a word or parenthesis
parseOther = many space <++>
    (("" <$ lookAhead (try parseKw)) <|> -- if there's a keyword, put it back!
     option "" ((parseParen <|> parseQuote <|> many1 (noneOf "'() \t")) <++> parseOther))

parseSqlToplevel = many ((,) <$> parseKw <*> (space <++> parseOther)) <* eof

parseQuote = char '\'' <++> inner <++> char '\'' where
    inner = many (noneOf "'\\") <++>
        option "" (char '\\' <++> anyChar <++> inner)

parseParen = char '(' <++> inner <++> char ')' where
    inner = many (noneOf "'()") <++>
        (parseQuote <++> inner <|> option "" (parseParen <++> inner))

I tried it with parseTest parseSqlToplevel "select ('a(sdf'())b". cheers