Parse::RecDescent and parsing whole files.

[Fadern]

Hi!

I'm quite new to Perl, however I'm writing a parser for a rather complex debug-file. The format is a quite long specification so I thought it would be best to use a parser module with a grammatics.

I've decided to try out the Parser::RecDescent, but I can't figure out how to parse an entire file. Every tutorial/documentation example I've found are about a single line of input, but I need to pick out data from a large file with the format spanning over multiple lines. In the simpler files the format looks like:

n1
{
n2 {
{n: 3}
n3
{
5
}
}
n4
{
4
}
...
}

Now what part of the RecDescent parser do you use to read a file? Or maybe I've just missed something fundamental about Perl.

Thank you for your time!

 

[rharsh]

What are you looking for when that file is parsed? What kind of data structure do you want?

 

[Fadern]

I'm planning to instantly write it to a XML-file with the corresponding actions defined in the grammatic.

Hope it'll elucidate something for you

 

[KevinADC]

read the file into a scalar and parse the scalar.

open(FH,"myfile");
my $file = do{local $/; <FH>}:
close(FH):

now you can parse $file.





------------------------------------------
- Kevin, perl coder unexceptional!

 

[Fadern]

Thank you very much Kevin, exactly what I was looking for.

And for other thread readers who need understanding of the above code from Kevin, browse to:

http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2004/06/18/variables.html

and search "for Other Values For $/".

Many thanks,
Fadern