ANN: pyparsing-1.3.1 released

Mon Jun 13 11:12:43 EDT 2005

(sorry if this is a double-post - I tried posting this last night but I
think GoogleGroups ate it)

Pyparsing is a pure-Python class library for quickly and easily
constructing recursive-descent parsers.  Pyparsing takes a
"building-block" approach to parser construction, as opposed to code
generation methods (such as lex/yacc) or pattern definition strings
(such as regular expressions).

Version 1.3.1 includes some minor enhancements, plus some performance
improvements that can really improve parsing speed for grammars that
use the Combine class (often used in specifying floating point
numbers).

The 1.3.1 change notes are listed below.  Download pyparsing at
http://pyparsing.sourceforge.net.

-- Paul McGuire

Version 1.3.1 - June 12, 2005
-----------------------------
- Added markInputline() method to ParseException, to display the input
  text line location of the parsing exception. (Thanks, Stefan
  Behnel!)

- Added setDefaultKeywordChars(), so that Keyword definitions using a
  custom keyword character set do not all need to add the keywordChars
  constructor argument (similar to setDefaultWhitespaceChars()).
  (suggested by rzhanka on the SourceForge pyparsing forum.)

- Simplified passing debug actions to setDebugAction().  You can now
  pass 'None' for a debug action if you want to take the default
  debug behavior.  To suppress a particular debug action, you can pass
  the pyparsing method nullDebugAction.

- Refactored parse exception classes, moved all behavior to
  ParseBaseException, and the former ParseException is now a subclass
  of ParseBaseException.  Added a second subclass, ParseFatalException,
  as a subclass of ParseBaseException.  User-defined parse actions can
  raise ParseFatalException if a data inconsistency is detected (such
  as a begin-tag/end-tag mismatch), and this will stop all parsing
  immediately. (Inspired by e-mail thread with Michele Petrazzo -
  thanks, Michelle!)

- Added helper methods makeXMLTags and makeHTMLTags, that simplify the
  definition of XML or HTML tag parse expressions for a given tagname.

  Both functions return a pair of parse expressions, one for the
  opening tag (that is, '<tagname>') and one for the closing tag
  ('</tagname>'). The opening tagame also recognizes any attribute
  definitions that have been included in the opening tag, as well as
  an empty tag (one with a trailing '/', as in '<BODY/>' which is
  equivalent to '<BODY></BODY>').

  makeXMLTags uses stricter XML syntax for attributes, requiring that
  they be enclosed in double quote characters - makeHTMLTags is more
  lenient, and accepts single-quoted strings or any contiguous string
  of characters up to the next whitespace character or '>' character.
  Attributes can be retrieved as dictionary or attribute values of
  the returned results from the opening tag.

- Added example SimpleCalc.py, a refinement on fourFn.py that adds
  an interactive session and support for variables.  (Thanks, Steven
  Siew!)

- Added performance improvement, up to 20% reduction!  (Found while
  working with Wolfgang Borgert on performance tuning of his TTCN3
  parser.)

- And another performance improvement, up to 25%, when using
  scanString! (Found while working with Henrik Westlund on his C
  header file scanner.)

- Updated UML diagrams to reflect latest class/method changes.