[plt-scheme] define own escape sequences?

From: Eli Barzilay (eli at barzilay.org)
Date: Mon Jun 15 21:58:09 EDT 2009

On Jun 15, Eli Barzilay wrote:
> 
> There is no hook for extending the string syntax, so you'll need a new
> reader macro for strings.  If you want all of mzscheme's escapes, then
> the tedious part in this will be all the numeric escapes (octal and
> hex).  So depending on the problem you're trying to solve, it might be
> easier to define a new kind of escape, or maybe use something like the
> scribble syntax (http://docs.plt-scheme.org/scribble/reader.html).

Actually, another way to hack this would be to just hook on the
mzscheme reader, after regexp-replacing the contents of the string.
Here's an example that constructs such a readtable -- with a string it
uses the mzscheme parser after replacing all `\@' with `\\@'.  If
you're using v4, it would be very easy to go from this code to a
reader for a `#lang <foo>' language that has this syntax for strings.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#lang scheme

(require syntax/readerr)

(define (make-my-readtable rt)
  (define (parse-string bytes)
    (parameterize ([current-readtable rt]) ; use the original reader
      (let ([bytes (regexp-replace*
                    #rx#"\\\\." bytes
                    (lambda (m) (if (equal? m #"\\@") #"\\\\@" m)))])
        (read (open-input-bytes (bytes-append #"\"" bytes #"\""))))))
  (make-readtable
   rt #\" 'terminating-macro
   (lambda (char inp src line col pos)
     (define bytes
       (cadr (or (regexp-try-match #rx#"^((?:[^\\]+?|\\\\.)*?)\"" inp)
                 (raise-read-eof-error "expected a closing '\"'"
                                       src line col pos #f))))
     (datum->syntax #f (parse-string bytes)
                    (list src line col pos (+ 2 (bytes-length bytes)))))))

(define (my-read . args)
  (parameterize ([current-readtable (make-my-readtable (current-readtable))])
    (apply read args)))

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                  http://www.barzilay.org/                 Maze is Life!


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