2.2 Infix Notation Calculator: calc

We now modify rpcalc to handle infix operators instead of postfix.³ Infix notation involves the concept of operator precedence and the need for parentheses nested to arbitrary depth. Here is the Bison code for calc.y, an infix desk-top calculator.

/* Infix notation calculator. */

%{
  #include <math.h>
  #include <stdio.h>
  int yylex (void);
  void yyerror (char const *);
%}

/* Bison declarations. */
%define api.value.type {double}
%token NUM
%left '-' '+'
%left '*' '/'
%precedence NEG   /* negation--unary minus */
%right '^'        /* exponentiation */

%% /* The grammar follows. */

input:
  %empty
| input line
;

line:
  '\n'
| exp '\n'  { printf ("\t%.10g\n", $1); }
;

exp:
  NUM
| exp '+' exp        { $$ = $1 + $3;      }
| exp '-' exp        { $$ = $1 - $3;      }
| exp '*' exp        { $$ = $1 * $3;      }
| exp '/' exp        { $$ = $1 / $3;      }
| '-' exp  %prec NEG { $$ = -$2;          }
| exp '^' exp        { $$ = pow ($1, $3); }
| '(' exp ')'        { $$ = $2;           }
;

%%

The functions yylex, yyerror and main can be the same as before.

There are two important new features shown in this code.

In the second section (Bison declarations), %left declares token kinds and says they are left-associative operators. The declarations %left and %right (right associativity) take the place of %token which is used to declare a token kind name without associativity/precedence. (These tokens are single-character literals, which ordinarily don’t need to be declared. We declare them here to specify the associativity/precedence.)

Operator precedence is determined by the line ordering of the declarations; the higher the line number of the declaration (lower on the page or screen), the higher the precedence. Hence, exponentiation has the highest precedence, unary minus (NEG) is next, followed by ‘*’ and ‘/’, and so on. Unary minus is not associative, only precedence matters (%precedence. See Operator Precedence.

The other important new feature is the %prec in the grammar section for the unary minus operator. The %prec simply instructs Bison that the rule ‘| '-' exp’ has the same precedence as NEG—in this case the next-to-highest. See Context-Dependent Precedence.

Here is a sample run of calc.y:

$ calc
4 + 4.5 - (34/(8*3+-3))
6.880952381
-56 + 2
-54
3 ^ 2
9