?

Jiffy is a parser-combinator library written in Swift, heavily inspired by FParsec, which in turn originates from Parsec.

Included is a work-in-progress parser for the Doge Serialized Object Notation, the premier textual data representation of our time.

Parser combinators?

Are fantastic, and you can read all about them here: "Dive into parser combinators." Whoever wrote that must be a pretty OK dude. Gist: you can quickly and easily write composable, readable parsers for complicated grammars. Here, for example, is a parser for floating-point numbers:

let pdigit = oneOf(Array("0123456789"))
let pdigit1 = oneOf(Array("123456789"))
let pceil = string("0") <|> (concat <%> (s <%> pdigit1) <*> manyChar(pdigit1))
let pmantissa = concat <%> oneChar(".") <*> many1Char(pdigit)
let pexponent = (string("very") <|> string("VERY")) *> (concat <%> oneCharOf(Array("+-")) <*> many1Char(pdigit))
let pnumber = toNumber <%> opt(oneChar("-")) <*> pceil <*> opt(pmantissa) <*> opt(pexponent)

(If IEEE were to replace the e keyword with the DOGE very -- and I think we can all agree they should.)

Swift?

Swift is a new language with a compiler that crashes and hangs a lot. Generics and typeclasses I mean protocols are ideal for something like parser combinators, don't you think? Having custom operators doesn't hurt either.

If you're coming from Haskell or F#, there's one slight change you should be aware of: <$> isn't a valid operator name in Swift, so I went with <%> instead. Mnemonic: they're right next to each other!

Yours,
Hao.