BNF grammar definition for Solidity

Question

I scoured the Mix and Solidity repos for something like a formal definition of the language's grammar, so that one may generate parsers using tools like GrammarKit, but couldn't find anything.

Any pointers?

If there's no answer here, I suggest trying https://gitter.im/ethereum/solidity — eth, Jun 15 '16 at 09:57

score 10 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 07 '17 at 18:37

10

There's a file called grammar.txt in the Solidity repo:

https://github.com/ethereum/solidity/blob/develop/docs/grammar.txt

That's probably what you're looking for?

edited Jan 07 '17 at 18:37

max taldykin

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answered Jun 15 '16 at 14:54

Jamie Hale

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Thanks! I searched for "grammar" in the same repo, and the only thing GitHub was able to find was "Scanner.cpp"... Too bad they're not using BNF, I might raise an issue for that. Should be easy to convert though. – mxk Jun 15 '16 at 15:02
@Matthias could you explain how to convert that file to BNF? – Sri Aug 14 '16 at 20:07
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NOTE: This has now moved to https://github.com/ethereum/solidity/blob/develop/docs/grammar.txt – Richard Horrocks Jan 05 '17 at 15:07
the 2nd link is also broken, but here’s a “mirror”: https://ethereumacademy.blogspot.com/2017/10/describing-syntax-of-solidity-using-bnf.html?m=1 – Erik Kaplun Mar 01 '21 at 14:41

score 8 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 03 '17 at 06:59

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I wrote an ANTLR4 grammar for Solidity that you may find useful:

https://github.com/solidityj/solidity-antlr4

It can generate parsers in any of the ANTLR supported targets and it has full support for the Solidity language as of today.

answered Feb 03 '17 at 06:59

Federico B.

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score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 08 '17 at 18:03

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Here's yet another link pointing to the solidity documentation:

http://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/develop/miscellaneous.html#language-grammar

answered Jan 08 '17 at 18:03

Karl Guggisberg

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 18 '16 at 09:32

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There is also a xText grammar, https://github.com/webdaford/smart-contract-tools/blob/master/workspace/com.dell.research.bc.eth.solidity.editor/src/com/dell/research/bc/eth/solidity/editor/Solidity.xtext which is quite similar to BNF.

answered Jun 18 '16 at 09:32

uzeidler

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 11 '17 at 03:44

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There is also a grammar based on javascript grammar.

answered Oct 11 '17 at 03:44

Tom Hale

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BNF grammar definition for Solidity

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