expressive/README.md

evalexpr

Evalexpr is an expression evaluator in Rust. It has a small and easy to use interface and can be easily integrated into any application. It is very lightweight and comes with no further dependencies. Evalexpr is available on crates.io, and its API Documentation is available on docs.rs.

Quickstart

Add evalexpr as dependency to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
evalexpr = "0.5"

Add the extern crate definition to your main.rs or lib.rs:

extern crate evalexpr;

Then you can use evalexpr to evaluate expressions like this:

use evalexpr::*;

assert_eq!(eval("1 + 2 + 3"), Ok(Value::from(6)));
assert_eq!(eval("1 - 2 * 3"), Ok(Value::from(-5)));
assert_eq!(eval("1.0 + 2 * 3"), Ok(Value::from(7.0)));
assert_eq!(eval("true && 4 > 2"), Ok(Value::from(true)));

And you can use variables and functions in expressions like this:

use evalexpr::*;
use evalexpr::error::expect_number;

let mut configuration = HashMapConfiguration::new();
configuration.insert_variable("five", 5);
configuration.insert_variable("twelve", 12);
configuration.insert_function("f", Function::new(1 /* argument amount */, Box::new(|arguments| {
    if let Value::Int(int) = arguments[0] {
        Ok(Value::Int(int / 2))
    } else if let Value::Float(float) = arguments[0] {
        Ok(Value::Float(float / 2.0))
    } else {
        Err(Error::expected_number(arguments[0].clone()))
    }
})));
configuration.insert_function("avg", Function::new(2 /* argument amount */, Box::new(|arguments| {
    expect_number(&arguments[0])?;
    expect_number(&arguments[1])?;

    if let (Value::Int(a), Value::Int(b)) = (&arguments[0], &arguments[1]) {
        Ok(Value::Int((a + b) / 2))
    } else {
        Ok(Value::Float((arguments[0].as_float()? + arguments[1].as_float()?) / 2.0))
    }
})));

assert_eq!(eval_with_configuration("five + 8 > f(twelve)", &configuration), Ok(Value::from(true)));
assert_eq!(eval_with_configuration("avg(2, 4) == 3", &configuration), Ok(Value::from(true)));

You can also precompile expressions like this:

use evalexpr::*;

let precompiled = build_operator_tree("a * b - c > 5").unwrap();

let mut configuration = HashMapConfiguration::new();
configuration.insert_variable("a", 6);
configuration.insert_variable("b", 2);
configuration.insert_variable("c", 3);
assert_eq!(precompiled.eval(&configuration), Ok(Value::from(true)));

configuration.insert_variable("c", 8);
assert_eq!(precompiled.eval(&configuration), Ok(Value::from(false)));

Features

Operators

This crate offers a set of binary and unary operators for building expressions. Operators have a precedence to determine their order of evaluation. The precedence should resemble that of most common programming languages, especially Rust. The precedence of variables and values is 200, and the precedence of function literals is 190.

Supported binary operators:

Operator	Precedence	Description		Operator	Precedence	Description
+	95	Sum		<	80	Lower than
-	95	Difference		>	80	Greater than
*	100	Product		<=	80	Lower than or equal
/	100	Division		>=	80	Greater than or equal
%	100	Modulo		==	80	Equal
&&	75	Logical and		!=	80	Not equal
||	70	Logical or

Supported unary operators:

Operator	Precedence	Description
-	110	Negation
!	110	Logical not

Values

Operators take values as arguments and produce values as results. Values can be boolean, integer or floating point numbers. Strings are supported as well, but there are no operations defined for them yet. Values are denoted as displayed in the following table.

Value type	Example
Value::Boolean	true, false
Value::Int	3, -9, 0, 135412
Value::Float	3., .35, 1.00, 0.5, 123.554

Integers are internally represented as i64, and floating point numbers are represented as f64. Operators that take numbers as arguments can either take integers or floating point numbers. If one of the arguments is a floating point number, all others are converted to floating point numbers as well, and the resulting value is a floating point number as well. Otherwise, the result is an integer.

Values have a precedence of 200.

Variables

This crate allows to compile parameterizable formulas by using variables. A variable is a literal in the formula, that does not contain whitespace or can be parsed as value. The user needs to provide bindings to the variables for evaluation. This is done with the Configuration trait. Two structs implementing this trait are predefined. There is EmptyConfiguration, that returns None for each request, and HashMapConfiguration, that stores mappings from literals to variables in a hash map.

Variables do not have fixed types in the expression itself, but aer typed by the configuration. The Configuration trait contains a function that takes a string literal and returns a Value enum. The variant of this enum decides the type on evaluation.

Variables have a precedence of 200.

Functions

This crate also allows to define arbitrary functions to be used in parsed expressions. A function is defined as a Function instance. It contains two properties, the argument_amount and the function. The function is a boxed Fn(&[Value]) -> Result<Value, Error>. The argument_amount determines the length of the slice that is passed to function. It is verified on execution by the crate and does not need to be verified by the function.

Be aware that functions need to verify the types of values that are passed to them. The error module contains some shortcuts for verification, and error types for passing a wrong value type. Also, most numeric functions need to differentiate between being called with integers or floating point numbers, and act accordingly.

Functions are identified by literals, like variables as well. A literal identifies a function, if it is followed by an opening brace (, another literal, or a value.

Same as variables, function bindings are provided by the user via a Configuration. Functions have a precedence of 190.

Examplary variables and functions in expressions:

Expression	Valid?	Explanation
a	yes
abc	yes
a<b	no	Expression is interpreted as variable a, operator < and variable b
a b	no	Expression is interpreted as function a applied to argument b
123	no	Expression is interpreted as Value::Int
true	no	Expression is interpreted as Value::Bool
.34	no	Expression is interpreted as Value::Float

License

This crate is primarily distributed under the terms of the MIT license. See LICENSE for details.

Closing Notes

If you have any ideas for features or see any problems in the code, architecture, interface, algorithmics or documentation, please open an issue on github.