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Ripper is a Ruby script parser.
You can get information from the parser with event-based style. Information such as abstract syntax trees or simple lexical analysis of the Ruby program.
Ripper provides an easy interface for parsing your program into a symbolic expression tree (or S-expression).
Understanding the output of the parser may come as a challenge, it's recommended you use PP to format the output for legibility.
require 'ripper'
require 'pp'
pp Ripper.sexp('def hello(world) "Hello, #{world}!"; end')
  #=> [:program,
       [[:def,
         [:@ident, "hello", [1, 4]],
         [:paren,
          [:params, [[:@ident, "world", [1, 10]]], nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil]],
         [:bodystmt,
          [[:string_literal,
            [:string_content,
             [:@tstring_content, "Hello, ", [1, 18]],
             [:string_embexpr, [[:var_ref, [:@ident, "world", [1, 27]]]]],
             [:@tstring_content, "!", [1, 33]]]]],
          nil,
          nil,
          nil]]]]
You can see in the example above, the expression starts with :program.
From here, a method definition at :def, followed by the method's identifier :@ident. After the method's identifier comes the parentheses :paren and the method parameters under :params.
Next is the method body, starting at :bodystmt (stmt meaning statement), which contains the full definition of the method.
In our case, we're simply returning a String, so next we have the :string_literal expression.
Within our :string_literal you'll notice two @tstring_content, this is the literal part for Hello,  and !. Between the two @tstring_content statements is a :string_embexpr, where embexpr is an embedded expression. Our expression consists of a local variable, or var_ref, with the identifier (@ident) of world.
ruby 1.9 (support CVS HEAD only)
bison 1.28 or later (Other yaccs do not work)
Ruby License.
Minero Aoki
aamine@loveruby.net
This array contains name of all ripper events.
This array contains name of parser events.
This array contains name of scanner events.
Tokenizes the Ruby program and returns an array of an array, which is formatted like [[lineno, column], type, token, state].
require 'ripper'
require 'pp'
pp Ripper.lex("def m(a) nil end")
#=> [[[1,  0], :on_kw,     "def", FNAME    ],
     [[1,  3], :on_sp,     " ",   FNAME    ],
     [[1,  4], :on_ident,  "m",   ENDFN    ],
     [[1,  5], :on_lparen, "(",   BEG|LABEL],
     [[1,  6], :on_ident,  "a",   ARG      ],
     [[1,  7], :on_rparen, ")",   ENDFN    ],
     [[1,  8], :on_sp,     " ",   BEG      ],
     [[1,  9], :on_kw,     "nil", END      ],
     [[1, 12], :on_sp,     " ",   END      ],
     [[1, 13], :on_kw,     "end", END      ]]
            
            
             
               # File ripper/lib/ripper/lexer.rb, line 44
def Ripper.lex(src, filename = '-', lineno = 1)
  Lexer.new(src, filename, lineno).lex
end
             
            Parses the given Ruby program read from src. src must be a String or an IO or a object with a gets method.
 
               # File ripper/lib/ripper/core.rb, line 18
def Ripper.parse(src, filename = '(ripper)', lineno = 1)
  new(src, filename, lineno).parse
end
             
            Parses src and create S-exp tree. Returns more readable tree rather than Ripper.sexp_raw. This method is mainly for developer use.
require 'ripper'
require 'pp'
pp Ripper.sexp("def m(a) nil end")
  #=> [:program,
       [[:def,
        [:@ident, "m", [1, 4]],
        [:paren, [:params, [[:@ident, "a", [1, 6]]], nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil]],
        [:bodystmt, [[:var_ref, [:@kw, "nil", [1, 9]]]], nil, nil, nil]]]]
 
               # File ripper/lib/ripper/sexp.rb, line 31
def Ripper.sexp(src, filename = '-', lineno = 1)
  builder = SexpBuilderPP.new(src, filename, lineno)
  sexp = builder.parse
  sexp unless builder.error?
end
             
            Parses src and create S-exp tree. This method is mainly for developer use.
require 'ripper'
require 'pp'
pp Ripper.sexp_raw("def m(a) nil end")
  #=> [:program,
       [:stmts_add,
        [:stmts_new],
        [:def,
         [:@ident, "m", [1, 4]],
         [:paren, [:params, [[:@ident, "a", [1, 6]]], nil, nil, nil]],
         [:bodystmt,
          [:stmts_add, [:stmts_new], [:var_ref, [:@kw, "nil", [1, 9]]]],
          nil,
          nil,
          nil]]]]
 
               # File ripper/lib/ripper/sexp.rb, line 57
def Ripper.sexp_raw(src, filename = '-', lineno = 1)
  builder = SexpBuilder.new(src, filename, lineno)
  sexp = builder.parse
  sexp unless builder.error?
end
             
            Parses src and return a string which was matched to pattern. pattern should be described as Regexp.
require 'ripper' p Ripper.slice('def m(a) nil end', 'ident') #=> "m" p Ripper.slice('def m(a) nil end', '[ident lparen rparen]+') #=> "m(a)" p Ripper.slice("<<EOS\nstring\nEOS", 'heredoc_beg nl $(tstring_content*) heredoc_end', 1) #=> "string\n"
 
               # File ripper/lib/ripper/lexer.rb, line 201
def Ripper.slice(src, pattern, n = 0)
  if m = token_match(src, pattern)
  then m.string(n)
  else nil
  end
end
             
            Tokenizes the Ruby program and returns an array of strings.
p Ripper.tokenize("def m(a) nil end") # => ["def", " ", "m", "(", "a", ")", " ", "nil", " ", "end"]
 
               # File ripper/lib/ripper/lexer.rb, line 21
def Ripper.tokenize(src, filename = '-', lineno = 1)
  Lexer.new(src, filename, lineno).tokenize
end