Merge pull request #26 from mark-i-m/macros

Start macro expansion chapter

src/macro-expansion.md

@@ -1 +1,161 @@
 # Macro expansion
+
+Macro expansion happens during parsing. `rustc` has two parsers, in fact: the
+normal Rust parser, and the macro parser. During the parsing phase, the normal
+Rust parser will set aside the contents of macros and their invokations. Later,
+before name resolution, macros are expanded using these portions of the code.
+The macro parser, in turn, may call the normal Rust parser when it needs to
+bind a metavariable (e.g.  `$my_expr`) while parsing the contents of a macro
+invocation. The code for macro expansion is in
+[`src/libsyntax/ext/tt/`][code_dir]. This chapter aims to explain how macro
+expansion works.
+
+### Example
+
+It's helpful to have an example to refer to. For the remainder of this chapter,
+whenever we refer to the "example _definition_", we mean the following:
+
+```rust
+macro_rules! printer {
+    (print $mvar:ident) => {
+        println!("{}", $mvar);
+    }
+    (print twice $mvar:ident) => {
+        println!("{}", $mvar);
+        println!("{}", $mvar);
+    }
+}
+```
+
+`$mvar` is called a _metavariable_. Unlike normal variables, rather than
+binding to a value in a computation, a metavariable binds _at compile time_ to
+a tree of _tokens_.  A _token_ is a single "unit" of the grammar, such as an
+identifier (e.g., `foo`) or punctuation (e.g., `=>`). There are also other
+special tokens, such as `EOF`, which indicates that there are no more tokens.
+Token trees resulting from paired parentheses-like characters (`(`...`)`,
+`[`...`]`, and `{`...`}`) -- they include the open and close and all the tokens
+in between (we do require that parentheses-like characters be balanced). Having
+macro expansion operate on token streams rather than the raw bytes of a source
+file abstracts away a lot of complexity. The macro expander (and much of the
+rest of the compiler) doesn't really care that much about the exact line and
+column of some syntactic construct in the code; it cares about what constructs
+are used in the code. Using tokens allows us to care about _what_ without
+worrying about _where_. For more information about tokens, see the
+[Parsing][parsing] chapter of this book.
+
+Whenever we refer to the "example _invocation_", we mean the following snippet:
+
+```rust
+printer!(print foo); // Assume `foo` is a variable defined somewhere else...
+```
+
+The process of expanding the macro invocation into the syntax tree
+`println!("{}", foo)` and then expanding that into a call to `Display::fmt` is
+called _macro expansion_, and it is the topic of this chapter.
+
+### The macro parser
+
+There are two parts to macro expansion: parsing the definition and parsing the
+invocations. Interestingly, both are done by the macro parser.
+
+Basically, the macro parser is like an NFA-based regex parser. It uses an
+algorithm similar in spirit to the [Earley parsing
+algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earley_parser). The macro parser is
+defined in [`src/libsyntax/ext/tt/macro_parser.rs`][code_mp].
+
+The interface of the macro parser is as follows (this is slightly simplified):
+
+```rust
+fn parse(
+    sess: ParserSession,
+    tts: TokenStream,
+    ms: &[TokenTree]
+) -> NamedParseResult
+```
+
+In this interface:
+
+- `sess` is a "parsing session", which keeps track of some metadata. Most
+  notably, this is used to keep track of errors that are generated so they can
+  be reported to the user.
+- `tts` is a stream of tokens. The macro parser's job is to consume the raw
+  stream of tokens and output a binding of metavariables to corresponding token
+  trees.
+- `ms` a _matcher_. This is a sequence of token trees that we want to match
+  `tts` against.
+
+In the analogy of a regex parser, `tts` is the input and we are matching it
+against the pattern `ms`. Using our examples, `tts` could be the stream of
+tokens containing the inside of the example invocation `print foo`, while `ms`
+might be the sequence of token (trees) `print $mvar:ident`.
+
+The output of the parser is a `NamedParserResult`, which indicates which of
+three cases has occured:
+
+- Success: `tts` matches the given matcher `ms`, and we have produced a binding
+  from metavariables to the corresponding token trees.
+- Failure: `tts` does not match `ms`. This results in an error message such as
+  "No rule expected token _blah_".
+- Error: some fatal error has occured _in the parser_. For example, this happens
+  if there are more than one pattern match, since that indicates the macro is
+  ambiguous.
+
+The full interface is defined [here][code_parse_int].
+
+The macro parser does pretty much exactly the same as a normal regex parser with
+one exception: in order to parse different types of metavariables, such as
+`ident`, `block`, `expr`, etc., the macro parser must sometimes call back to the
+normal Rust parser.
+
+As mentioned above, both definitions and invocations of macros are parsed using
+the macro parser. This is extremely non-intuitive and self-referential. The code
+to parse macro _definitions_ is in
+[`src/libsyntax/ext/tt/macro_rules.rs`][code_mr]. It defines the pattern for
+matching for a macro definition as `$( $lhs:tt => $rhs:tt );+`. In other words,
+a `macro_rules` defintion should have in its body at least one occurence of a
+token tree followed by `=>` followed by another token tree. When the compiler
+comes to a `macro_rules` definition, it uses this pattern to match the two token
+trees per rule in the definition of the macro _using the macro parser itself_.
+In our example definition, the metavariable `$lhs` would match the patterns of
+both arms: `(print $mvar:ident)` and `(print twice $mvar:ident)`.  And `$rhs`
+would match the bodies of both arms: `{ println!("{}", $mvar); }` and `{
+println!("{}", $mvar); println!("{}", $mvar); }`. The parser would keep this
+knowledge around for when it needs to expand a macro invocation.
+
+When the compiler comes to a macro invocation, it parses that invocation using
+the same NFA-based macro parser that is described above. However, the matcher
+used is the first token tree (`$lhs`) extracted from the arms of the macro
+_definition_. Using our example, we would try to match the token stream `print
+foo` from the invocation against the matchers `print $mvar:ident` and `print
+twice $mvar:ident` that we previously extracted from the definition.  The
+algorithm is exactly the same, but when the macro parser comes to a place in the
+current matcher where it needs to match a _non-terminal_ (e.g. `$mvar:ident`),
+it calls back to the normal Rust parser to get the contents of that
+non-terminal. In this case, the Rust parser would look for an `ident` token,
+which it finds (`foo`) and returns to the macro parser. Then, the macro parser
+proceeds in parsing as normal. Also, note that exactly one of the matchers from
+the various arms should match the invocation (otherwise, the macro is
+ambiguous).
+
+For more information about the macro parser's implementation, see the comments
+in [`src/libsyntax/ext/tt/macro_parser.rs`][code_mp].
+
+### Hygiene
+
+TODO
+
+### Procedural Macros
+
+TODO
+
+### Custom Derive
+
+TODO
+
+
+
+[code_dir]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/tree/master/src/libsyntax/ext/tt
+[code_mp]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/tree/master/src/libsyntax/ext/tt/macro_parser.rs
+[code_mp]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/tree/master/src/libsyntax/ext/tt/macro_rules.rs
+[code_parse_int]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/blob/a97cd17f5d71fb4ec362f4fbd79373a6e7ed7b82/src/libsyntax/ext/tt/macro_parser.rs#L421
+[parsing]: ./the-parser.md