About PLY

PLY is a parser generator tool that uses reflection to read token definitions and production rules written in pure Python. You can, for example, define tokens with a simple string attribution or with methods containing a regular expression in its docstring.

To install PLY on your machine for python2/3, follow the steps outlined below:

1. Download the source code from here.
2. Unzip the downloaded zip file
3. Navigate into the unzipped ply-3.10 folder
4. Run the following command in your terminal: python setup.py install

If you completed all the above, you should now be able to use the PLY module. You can test it out by opening a python interpreter and typing import ply.lex.

Note: Do not use pip to install PLY, it will install a broken distribution on your machine.

Examples of token definitions with code to interpret value:

def t_BOOLEAN(token):
    r'(?:true|false)'
    token.value = token.value == "true"
    return token
def t_NUMBER(token):
    r'[0-9]+'
    token.value = int(token.value)
    return token

• Project page: http://www.dabeaz.com/ply/

• Main docs: http://www.dabeaz.com/ply/ply.html

Related tags:

• python
  The Python Language
• parsing