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Introduction

Valve recently launched the Dota 2 Workshop Tools, which allows players to create their own maps with custom gamemodes, similar to Warcraft 3 in capabilities.

Ability and unit definitions are stored in txt files under a specific format, very similar to JSON:

{
    "key" "value"
    "otherKey" { //C-style comments
        "moreKey" "moreValue"
    } //no block comments!
}

It's essentialy JSON with strings only, no punctuation and comments.

I've been taking my time into writing a serializer/deserializer for such files in Lua, so that fellow map creators can use it to save arbitrary data into files. I feel like it's a bit clunky, and not the most readable solution, seeing that I'm new with Lua, this is why I've joined this site. I'd like to see which points can be improved on the code, ither with the use of convenience functions, or plainly logic changes. Even style changes are welcome, since I'm completely unaware of Lua's coding standards.

The code

Everything is contained in a 150-line Lua file, available at GitHub. Below is the mentioned file. I've wrapped everything into the KV == nil condition so I can have safely local variables and functions, essentialy creating a closure.

if KV == nil then
    local function contains(table, element)
        for _, value in pairs(table) do
            if value == element then
                return true
            end
        end
        return false
    end

    local chars = {
        indent = "\t",
        escape = "\\",
        delim = '"',
        commentStart = "/",
        commentEnd = {"\n", "\r"},
        blockStart = "{",
        blockEnd = "}"
    }

    -- iterate_chars doc
    -- receives string to operate and a iterator func
    -- iterator is called for each character in the string (unless skip)
    -- iterator is called with current, previous and next chars, and also
    -- the remaining uniterated string
    -- iterator can return false to abort iteration, or return a number
    -- if iterator returns a number N, skips the next N chars.
    -- otherwise proceed normally
    function iterate_chars(str, iterator)
        local remaining = ""
        local jump = 0
        for i = 1, #str do
            if i > jump then -- skips characters when under the jump
                local prev = str:sub(i-1,i-1) 
                local peek = str:sub(i+1,i+1)
                local char = str:sub(i,i)
                local remain = str:sub(i, #str) -- everything still unprocessed, including the current char
                local iterresult = iterator(char, prev, peek, remain, i) -- calls the iterating function
                if type(iterresult) == "number" then
                    jump = i + iterresult -- if the function returns a number, skip that many characters
                elseif iterresult == false then
                    return remain -- if the function returns false, stop iteration and return the remaining
                end
            end
        end
    end

    function parse_string(str)
        local stringmode = false
        local result = ""
        local remain = iterate_chars(str, function(char, prev, peek)
            if char == chars.escape then -- separate check so escape backslashes don't get processed
                if peek == chars.delim then
                    result = result .. peek -- escape for \", allowing quotes inside strings
                end
            elseif char == chars.delim then
                if prev ~= chars.escape then
                    -- if it's a quote that is not escaped...
                    if stringmode then
                        return false -- stops iteration when the closing quote is found
                    else
                        stringmode = true
                    end
                end
            elseif stringmode then
                result = result .. char
            end
        end)
        -- result, remain, processed length
        return {result, remain, #result+2}
    end

    local function parse_block(str)
        -- parses a string, inserts the content into tbl and returns processed length
        local function parse_add_string(tbl, toparse)
            local data = parse_string(toparse)
            table.insert(tbl, data[1])
            return data[3]
        end

        local blockmode = false
        local commentmode = false
        local isKey = true
        local result = {}
        local keyslist = {}
        local valuelist = {}
        local remain = iterate_chars(str, function(char, prev, peek, remain)
            if char == chars.commentStart and peek == chars.commentStart then -- start comment
                commentmode = true
            elseif commentmode and contains(chars.commentEnd, char) then -- end comment
                commentmode = false
            elseif commentmode then
                -- just ignore...
            elseif not blockmode and char == chars.blockStart then -- block start detected
                blockmode = true
            elseif not char:match("%s") and char ~= chars.indent then -- non space char detected
                if blockmode then
                    if char == chars.blockEnd then -- end of block detected
                        blockmode = false
                        return false
                    elseif isKey then -- when on key mode, parse strings only
                        isKey = false
                        return parse_add_string(keyslist, remain)
                    else
                        isKey = true
                        if char == chars.blockStart then -- values can also be blocks
                            local data = parse_block(remain)
                            table.insert(valuelist, data[1])
                            return data[3]
                        else -- in addition to strings
                            return parse_add_string(valuelist, remain)
                        end
                    end
                end
            end
        end)

        -- joins the keys and values into one table
        for n, key in pairs(keyslist) do
            result[key] = valuelist[n]
        end
        -- result, remain, processed length 
        return {result, remain, #str-#remain}
    end

    local function serialize_block(tbl, indent)
        indent = indent or 0
        print(indent)
        local indentation = indent and indent ~= 0 and chars.indent:rep(indent) or "" -- for first level

        local result = chars.blockStart
        for k,v in pairs(tbl) do
            result = table.concat({result, '\n', indentation, chars.indent, chars.delim, k, chars.delim, " "}, "") -- Joins whitespace and key to the result
            if type(v) == "table" then -- Joins the value onto the result
                result = result .. serialize_block(v, indent + 1)
            else
                result = table.concat({result, chars.delim, tostring(v), chars.delim}, "")
            end
        end
        return table.concat({result, "\n", indentation, chars.blockEnd}, "") -- finally joins the closing character to the result
    end

    KV = {}
    function KV:Parse(str)
        return parse_block(str)[1] -- returns the parsed content
    end
    function KV:Dump(tbl)
        return serialize_block(tbl) -- returns the stringified table
    end
end
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1 Answer 1

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Essentially, the data format is more similar to the lua-table syntax than JSON. It'll be far easier to parse the text string (or file, which can be loaded as a string variable) to be changed to a table instead. Here's the little code I wrote (and tried).

local function comment(w)
    local r, m = w, w:match '(.+)//'
    local t, _ = m:gsub( '"', '' )
    if _ % 2 == 1 then return r else return m end
end
local function parser(x)
    local r = x:gsub( "(.-)[\n\r]+",
        function(w)
          if w:match '//' then w = comment(w) end
          w = w:gsub( '("[^"]+") {', '[%1] = {' )
          w = w:gsub( '("[^"]+") ("[^"]+")', '[%1] = %2,' )
          return w..'\n'
        end
    )
    return loadstring( "return "..r:gsub('}', '},'):gsub(',$', '') )()
end

Now, to execute (or test), you pass your string to the function parser, which'll return the key-value pairs as a table. For my testing purposes, I used the data string as follows:

{
    "key" "value"
    "otherKey" { //C-style "comments" "to break?"
        "moreKey" "moreValue"
        {"let's see" "if // breaks" } //should it?}
    } //no block comments!
    "let's see" "if // breaks"
}

You can use any pretty printers for printing this returned lua-table back. Do comment if you don't understand any of the steps in my program.

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3
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ That's awesome, would you mind explaining some points? 1. I don't really understand the comment function, it's returning the whole string if the number of quotes is even, and just what is before the // if it's not? (what happens with a escaped quote \"?) 2. I can imagine that (.-) has the Regex equivalent of (.*?)? 3. What are the [%1]s? (specifically, the square brackets). I also forgot to mention, but any number of whitespace characters is allowed between keys and values (how could that be done with this solution). 4. Finally, will those patterns going to degrade performance? ... \$\endgroup\$
    – Kroltan
    Aug 27, 2014 at 9:50
  • \$\begingroup\$ (It's for a game. Performance is a very good thing to have. I can suppose that scan methods are linear? If so, it would take about (n^2)*3n+2m (n = string length, m = result length), no? I know Lua isn't really performant either, but still... \$\endgroup\$
    – Kroltan
    Aug 27, 2014 at 9:54
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ @Kroltan Yes. 1. The comment function would fail for an escaped quote, but that was a corner case and I didn't think of that. 2. Yes. 3. In a lua-table, the keys should be enclosed in square brackets if they are strings, which is what I'm doing here. %1 and %2 are the matched groups. For varying number of spaces, you can use ` *` or ` +` as per your needs. \$\endgroup\$
    – hjpotter92
    Aug 28, 2014 at 6:22

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