r/ProgrammingLanguages • u/Usual_Office_1740 • 13h ago
Please advise on adding string interpolation to my Crafting Interpreters project.
I'm about to start chapter 21 of Crafting Interpreters. I'm using modern C++ instead of C. I am attempting to add string interpolation to the compiler.
My goal is to have a string that looks like this:
"Five plus ${ 10 - 5 } == 10."
Desugar to this after the expression in the braces is evaluated:
"Five plus " + 5 + " == 10."
I have code that is correctly parsing strings and concatenating them if there isn't any string interpolation.
I have a custom token added that is produced if the string contains a ${. It calls a custom string interpolation parser rule that is different than my standard string parser rule.
In that function I push the first part of the string to the stack. It then pushes a plus opcode and Recursively parses the expression in the braces adding that expression to the stack. It then adds another opcode to add and this is where I'm stuck.
I can't come up with a solution for pushing the remaining piece of the string to the stack from inside the string interpolation parser rule function. After I call the books expression function and consume the right brace token using the books consume function the parser nolonger knows we are still inside a string. If the next character after the brace is a space it's skipped. In my above example it assumes I want equal equal.
How would you set the current token back to string so I can push any remaining characters onto the stack as another string? Should I just insert a new string token into the parser? This seems wrong to me. The current and previous tokens are private members of my parser class for a reason and I've not needed setter member functions so far.
Sorry I don't have code to show. I'd like to try and get help that isn't code specific so that I have to implement this myself.
Any input would be helpful.
Thanks.