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pythonregexpyparsing

How can I break a string into nested tokens?


I have strings made up of Boolean terms and equations, like so

x=1 AND (x=2 OR x=3) AND NOT (x=4 AND x=5) AND (x=5) AND y=1

I would like to break up the x into groups that were separated by AND, while respecting parentheses as grouping operators. For example the result for the string above would be

[['x=1'], ['x=2', 'x=3'], ['x=4'], ['x=5'], ['x=5']]

x=2 and x=3 are in the same group because they are grouped by () and not separated by an AND. The last equation was ignored because it does not start with x.

UPDATE

Another example is

x=1 AND (x=2 OR (x=3 AND x=4))

where each equation should be separate

[['x=1'], ['x=2', [['x=3'], ['x=4']]]

The closest I found was this post but I don't know how to modify it to my needs.


Solution

  • As you probably saw in that other question, parsing infix notation such as this is best done in pyparsing using the infixNotation helper (formerly named operatorPrecedence). Here are the basics for using infixNotation on your problem:

    import pyparsing as pp
    
    # define expressions for boolean operator keywords, and for an ident
    # (which we take care not to parse an operator as an identifier)
    AND, OR, NOT = map(pp.Keyword, "AND OR NOT".split())
    any_keyword = AND | OR | NOT
    ident = pp.ungroup(~any_keyword + pp.Char(pp.alphas))
    ident.setName("ident")
    
    # use pyparsing_common.number pre-defined expression for any numeric value
    numeric_value = pp.pyparsing_common.number
    
    # define an expression for 'x=1', 'y!=200', etc.
    comparison_op = pp.oneOf("= != < > <= >=")
    comparison = pp.Group(ident + comparison_op + numeric_value)
    comparison.setName("comparison")
    
    # define classes for the parsed results, where we can do further processing by
    # node type later
    class Node:
        oper = None
        def __init__(self, tokens):
            self.tokens = tokens[0]
    
        def __repr__(self):
            return "{}:{!r}".format(self.oper, self.tokens.asList())
    
    class UnaryNode(Node):
        def __init__(self, tokens):
            super().__init__(tokens)
            del self.tokens[0]
    
    class BinaryNode(Node):
        def __init__(self, tokens):
            super().__init__(tokens)
            del self.tokens[1::2]
    
    class NotNode(UnaryNode):
        oper = "NOT"
    
    class AndNode(BinaryNode):
        oper = "AND"
    
    class OrNode(BinaryNode):
        oper = "OR"
    
    # use infixNotation helper to define recursive expression parser,
    # including handling of nesting in parentheses
    expr = pp.infixNotation(comparison,
            [
                (NOT, 1, pp.opAssoc.RIGHT, NotNode),
                (AND, 2, pp.opAssoc.LEFT, AndNode),
                (OR, 2, pp.opAssoc.LEFT, OrNode),
            ])
    

    Now try using this expr parser on a test string.

    test = "x=1 AND (x=2 OR x=3 OR y=12) AND NOT (x=4 AND x=5) AND (x=6) AND y=7"
    
    try:
        result = expr.parseString(test, parseAll=True)
        print(test)
        print(result)
    except pp.ParseException as pe:
        print(pp.ParseException.explain(pe))
    

    Gives:

    x=1 AND (x=2 OR x=3 OR y=12) AND NOT (x=4 AND x=5) AND (x=6) AND y=7
    [AND:[['x', '=', 1], OR:[['x', '=', 2], ['x', '=', 3], ['y', '=', 12]], NOT:[AND:[['x', '=', 4], ['x', '=', 5]]], ['x', '=', 6], ['y', '=', 7]]]
    

    From this point, collapsing the nested AND nodes and removing non-x comparisons can be done using regular Python.