ANTLR (ANother Tool for Language Recognition) is a powerful parser generator for reading, processing, executing, or translating structured text or binary files. It's widely used to build languages, tools, and frameworks. From a grammar, ANTLR generates a parser that can build and walk parse trees.
Hi and welcome to the Honey Badger 4.2 release (February 3, 2014) of ANTLR!
-
Install Java (version 1.6 or higher)
-
Download
$ cd /usr/local/lib $ curl -O http://www.antlr4.org/download/antlr-4.2-complete.jar
Or just download in browser and put it somewhere rational like
/usr/local/lib
. -
Add
antlr-4.2-complete.jar
to yourCLASSPATH
:$ export CLASSPATH=".:/usr/local/lib/antlr-4.2-complete.jar:$CLASSPATH"
Is also a good idea to put this in your .bash_profile or whatever your startup script is.
-
Create aliases for the ANTLR Tool, and TestRig.
$ alias antlr4='java -jar /usr/local/lib/antlr-4.2-complete.jar' $ alias grun='java org.antlr.v4.runtime.misc.TestRig'
-
Install Java (version 1.6 or higher)
-
Download antlr-4.2-complete.jar Save to your directory for 3rd party Java libraries, say
C:\Javalib
-
Add
antlr-4.2-complete.jar
toCLASSPATH
, either:
-
Permanently: Using System Properties dialog > Environment variables > Create or append to
CLASSPATH
variable -
Temporarily, at command line:
SET CLASSPATH=C:\Javalib\antlr-4.2-complete.jar;%CLASSPATH%
- Create short convenient commands for the ANTLR Tool, and TestRig, using batch files or doskey commands:
-
Batch files (in directory in system
PATH
)antlr4.bat: java org.antlr.v4.Tool %* run.bat: java org.antlr.v4.runtime.misc.TestRig %*
-
Or, use doskey commands:
doskey antlr4=java org.antlr.v4.Tool $* doskey grun =java org.antlr.v4.runtime.misc.TestRig $*
Either launch org.antlr.v4.Tool
directly:
$ java org.antlr.v4.Tool
ANTLR Parser Generator Version 4.2
-o ___ specify output directory where all output is generated
-lib ___ specify location of .tokens files
...
or use -jar
option on java:
$ java -jar /usr/local/lib/antlr-4.2-complete.jar
ANTLR Parser Generator Version 4.2
-o ___ specify output directory where all output is generated
-lib ___ specify location of .tokens files
...
In a temporary directory, put the following grammar inside file Hello.g4
:
// Define a grammar called Hello
// match keyword hello followed by an identifier
// match lower-case identifiers
grammar Hello;
r : 'hello' ID ;
ID : [a-z]+ ;
WS : [ \t\r\n]+ -> skip ; // skip spaces, tabs, newlines
Then run ANTLR the tool on it:
$ cd /tmp
$ antlr4 Hello.g4
$ javac Hello*.java
Now test it:
$ grun Hello r -tree
hello parrt
^D
(r hello parrt)
(That ^D
means EOF
on unix; it's ^Z
in Windows.) The -tree
option prints the parse tree in LISP notation.
You can buy a book The Definitive ANTLR 4 Reference
Programmers run into parsing problems all the time. Whether it’s a data format like JSON, a network protocol like SMTP, a server configuration file for Apache, a PostScript/PDF file, or a simple spreadsheet macro language—ANTLR v4 and this book will demystify the process. ANTLR v4 has been rewritten from scratch to make it easier than ever to build parsers and the language applications built on top. This completely rewritten new edition of the bestselling Definitive ANTLR Reference shows you how to take advantage of these new features.
This repository is a collection of grammars without actions where the root directory name is the all-lowercase name of the language parsed by the grammar. For example, java, cpp, csharp, c, etc...
Terence Parr, parrt@cs.usfca.edu
ANTLR project lead and supreme dictator for life
University of San Francisco