[ANN] otto, New parser coming in a week or so

[Robert K]

I'll be releasing a new, rewritten parser for otto (A JavaScript parser and interpreter in Go) in about a week or so.

The new parser was rewritten with learnings (cargo-culting :) from "go/parser" and is cleaner, more straightforward, faster, etc. It is also exported. Available here (parser-master branch):

https://github.com/robertkrimen/otto/tree/parser-master

This is an under-the-hood change, so nothing should really break (but try it anyway if you're importing directly). This new system is passing the same ~9000 test262 tests and as well the existing package tests (and new ones).

[Gustavo Niemeyer]

Very nice, Robert. This is one of the projects I haven't done
anything with yet, but is waiting in the toolbox for the right moment.

Do you have a rough roadmap of where you want to take otto in the
short to medium term?

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[Robert K]

On Wednesday, March 26, 2014 10:13:03 AM UTC-7, Gustavo Niemeyer wrote:

Very nice, Robert.  This is one of the projects I haven't done
anything with yet, but is waiting in the toolbox for the right moment.

Do you have a rough roadmap of where you want to take otto in the
short to medium term?

Thanks. Yes, some next steps:

• Give the runtime similar treatment to the parser, review the code and do a cleanup
  
• Add the ability to "compile" scripts and execute them repeatedly, rather than reparsing the code everytime
• This defect can be worked around by "compiling" to a JavaScript function, but it would be good to have an explicit way
  
• Maybe have the ability to serialize/deserialize compiled scripts, to skip the parsing step on startup
• Add a simple optimization stage during compilation (mostly to get back what was lost with the refactoring of the parser)
• Handle "use strict" in the parser/runtime
• Take care of the RegExp issue. Currently otto uses Go "regexp", which doesn't support (?!) or (?=)
• Will probably have to find/author an engine in Go that does the same thing
• Improve the interface, make it easier for Go & ECMAScript to interact
• Add ECMAScript 6 features
  

[dsav...@gmail.com]

Thanks for your hard work on this package, Robert!

I would like to be able to do static analysis of Javascript in Go - not interpreting JS but operations on the AST or set of tokens like you can do with esprima or  acorn.  Would you say that it is or could b in scope of otto?  Do you think it would be possible to expose methods and data structures for AST manipulation?  Is it feasible to add a "parse-only" (not interpreting) mode and in that mode accept all valid Javascript regular expressions - pieces like:  foo = /^<(\w+)\s*\/?>(?:<\/\1>|)$/ ?

Thanks!

[Robert K]

On Thursday, March 27, 2014 12:16:42 PM UTC-7, dsav...@gmail.com wrote:

Thanks for your hard work on this package, Robert!

I would like to be able to do static analysis of Javascript in Go - not interpreting JS but operations on the AST or set of tokens like you can do with esprima or  acorn.  Would you say that it is or could b in scope of otto?  Do you think it would be possible to expose methods and data structures for AST manipulation?  Is it feasible to add a "parse-only" (not interpreting) mode and in that mode accept all valid Javascript regular expressions - pieces like:  foo = /^<(\w+)\s*\/?>(?:<\/\1>|)$/ ?

Yes, that's the plan. There will be an "otto/parser" package with an exported parser and AST nodes, etc.

[Ernest Micklei]

The roadmap looks very promising, especially the "compilation" and serialization. I am a greatful user of Otto. Thanks.