This program turns a description of a state machine that takes its input
byte-by-byte into C++ code. The state machine is described in a custom
format as specified below:
```
// Comments are started by two slashes, and cause the rest of the line
// to be ignored
@name ExampleStateMachine // sets the name of the generated class
@namespace Test // sets the namespace (optional)
@begin Begin // sets the state the parser will start in
// The rest of the file contains one or more states and an optional
// @anywhere directive. Each of these is a curly bracket delimited set
// of state transitions. State transitions contain a selector, the
// literal "=>" and a (new_state, action) tuple. Examples:
// 0x0a => (Begin, PrintLine)
// [0x00..0x1f] => (_, Warn) // '_' means no change
// [0x41..0x5a] => (BeginWord, _) // '_' means no action
// Rules common to all states. These take precedence over rules in the
// specific states.
@anywhere {
0x0a => (Begin, PrintLine)
[0x00..0x1f] => (_, Warn)
}
Begin {
[0x41..0x5a] => (Word, _)
[0x61..0x7a] => (Word, _)
// For missing values, the transition (_, _) is implied
}
Word {
// The entry action is run when we transition to this state from a
// *different* state. @anywhere can't have this
@entry IncreaseWordCount
0x09 => (Begin, _)
0x20 => (Begin, _)
// The exit action is run before we transition to any *other* state
// from here. @anywhere can't have this
@exit EndOfWord
}
```
The generated code consists of a single class which takes a
`Function<Action, u8>` as a parameter in its constructor. This gets
called whenever an action is to be done. This is because some input
might not produce an action, but others might produce up to 3 (exit,
state transition, entry). The actions allow us to build a more
advanced parser over the simple state machine.
The sole public method, `void advance(u8)`, handles the input
byte-by-byte, managing the state changes and requesting the appropriate
Action from the handler.
Internally, the state transitions are resolved via a lookup table. This
is a bit wasteful for more complex state machines, therefore the
generator is designed to be easily extendable with a switch-based
resolver; only the private `lookup_state_transition` method needs to be
re-implemented.
My goal for this tool is to use it for implementing a standard-compliant
ANSI escape sequence parser for LibVT, as described on
<https://vt100.net/emu/dec_ansi_parser>
