uikit0 / cparser-1

Sort-of GNU C99 Declaration Parser

Python GNU C99 Declaration Parser

This is a sort-of GNU C99 declaration parser. This parser exists because:

• I needed to parse glibc headers, Linux kernel headers, and libc as on Max OS X (Darwin / BSD libc?).
• I did not want to be bound to either of gcc or clang. In retrospect, something like the ROSE compiler might have been best; however, at the time, I did not know about it, and it would make a very large dependency as well.
• I have a strong preference toward Python, as opposed to another scripting language.
• Previous Python C parsers that I have tried [1] did not meet my needs when parsing glibc/Linux kernel headers.

This code includes a C tokenizer, parser, and almost certainly buggy declaration printer. The parser assumes that code being parsed is valid--or almost valid--pre-processed GNU C99.

This code exists as part of a much larger project. In that project, this code is used as part of several code generators. The current focus of this other project is type and function declarations, hence the emphasis on those aspects of the language and a complete lack of code to parse normal expressions / statements.

[1] Note: I tried two Python C parsers some time ago, and so recent versions of those parsers might meet my current needs. However, that is now beside the point because this parser meets my current needs rather well.

Maintenance

I will update this library as I discover bugs in it. I also welcome updates from interested third parties.