whitequark / whitequark/parser

Unary `+` precedence

Open
#1,016 5 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

bug
Dominant language
Yacc
Stars
1.6k
Forks
205
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

There are two issues with unary + precedence that I can find.

The first is that the parser is creating a send node, when there isn't really going to be a method call. This is, for example:

class Integer; def +@; self * 10; end; end

+5 ** 2 # => 25
+ 5 ** 2 # => 2500

As you can see, the space affects the result. If there is no space, then no method call is generated. However, in both cases you get the same AST:

(send
  (send
    (int 5) :**
    (int 2)) :+@)

The other issue is that the precedence in this AST is incorrect in both cases. This is implying that the expression should be parsed as:

+(5 ** 2)

but in reality, in both cases it should be parsed as:

(+5) ** 2 # => 25
(+ 5) ** 2 # => 2500

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reproducing the two unary + examples from the issue and inspect the parser code that builds the shown send AST. Compare the AST and evaluation for spaced and unspaced forms, then verify that the resulting trees reflect the documented grouping and method-call behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
ruby
Domain
compilers
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.