Let me preface this by saying I know absolutely nothing about how parsers work. Having said that, line 296 of gram.y defines the following tokens to represent assignment in the (YACC?) parser R uses:
%token LEFT_ASSIGN EQ_ASSIGN RIGHT_ASSIGN LBB
Then, on lines 5140 through 5150 of gram.c, this looks like the corresponding C code:
case '-':
if (nextchar('>')) {
if (nextchar('>')) {
yylval = install_and_save2("<<-", "->>");
return RIGHT_ASSIGN;
}
else {
yylval = install_and_save2("<-", "->");
return RIGHT_ASSIGN;
}
}
Finally, starting on line 5044 of gram.c, the definition of install_and_save2:
/* Get an R symbol, and set different yytext. Used for translation of -> to <-. ->> to <<- */
static SEXP install_and_save2(char * text, char * savetext)
{
strcpy(yytext, savetext);
return install(text);
}
So again, having zero experience working with parsers, it seems that -> and ->> are translated directly into <- and <<-, respectively, at a very low level in the interpretation process.
You brought up a very good point in asking how the parser "knows" to reverse the arguments to -> - considering that -> appears to be installed into the R symbol table as <- - and thus be able to correctly interpret x -> y as y <- x and not x <- y. The best I can do is provide further speculation as I continue to come across "evidence" to support my claims. Hopefully some merciful YACC expert will stumble on this question and provide a little insight; I'm not going to hold my breath on that, though.
Back to lines 383 and 384 of gram.y, this looks like some more parsing logic related to the aforementioned LEFT_ASSIGN and RIGHT_ASSIGN symbols:
| expr LEFT_ASSIGN expr { $$ = xxbinary($2,$1,$3); setId( $$, @$); }
| expr RIGHT_ASSIGN expr { $$ = xxbinary($2,$3,$1); setId( $$, @$); }
Although I can't really make heads or tails of this crazy syntax, I did notice that the second and third arguments to xxbinary are swapped to WRT LEFT_ASSIGN (xxbinary($2,$1,$3)) and RIGHT_ASSIGN (xxbinary($2,$3,$1)).
Here's what I'm picturing in my head:
LEFT_ASSIGN Scenario: y <- x
$2 is the second "argument" to the parser in the above expression, i.e. <-$1 is the first; namely y $3 is the third; x
Therefore, the resulting (C?) call would be xxbinary(<-, y, x).
Applying this logic to RIGHT_ASSIGN, i.e. x -> y, combined with my earlier conjecture about <- and -> getting swapped,
$2 gets translated from -> to <-$1 is x$3 is y
But since the result is xxbinary($2,$3,$1) instead of xxbinary($2,$1,$3), the result is still xxbinary(<-, y, x).
Building off of this a little further, we have the definition of xxbinary on line 3310 of gram.c:
static SEXP xxbinary(SEXP n1, SEXP n2, SEXP n3)
{
SEXP ans;
if (GenerateCode)
PROTECT(ans = lang3(n1, n2, n3));
else
PROTECT(ans = R_NilValue);
UNPROTECT_PTR(n2);
UNPROTECT_PTR(n3);
return ans;
}
Unfortunately I could not find a proper definition of lang3 (or its variants lang1, lang2, etc...) in the R source code, but I'm assuming that it is used for evaluating special functions (i.e. symbols) in a way that is synchronized with the interpreter.
Updates
I'll try to address some of your additional questions in the comments as best I can given my (very) limited knowledge of the parsing process.
1) Is this really the only object in R that behaves like this?? (I've
got in mind the John Chambers quote via Hadley's book: "Everything
that exists is an object. Everything that happens is a function call."
This clearly lies outside that domain -- is there anything else like
this?
First, I agree that this lies outside of that domain. I believe Chambers' quote concerns the R Environment, i.e. processes that are all taking place after this low level parsing phase. I'll touch on this a little bit more below, however. Anyways, the only other example of this sort of behavior I could find is the ** operator, which is a synonym for the more common exponentiation operator ^. As with right assignment, ** doesn't seem to be "recognized" as a function call, etc... by the interpreter:
R> `->`
#Error: object '->' not found
R> `**`
#Error: object '**' not found
I found this because it's the only other case where install_and_save2 is used by the C parser:
case '*':
/* Replace ** by ^. This has been here since 1998, but is
undocumented (at least in the obvious places). It is in
the index of the Blue Book with a reference to p. 431, the
help for 'Deprecated'. S-PLUS 6.2 still allowed this, so
presumably it was for compatibility with S. */
if (nextchar('*')) {
yylval = install_and_save2("^", "**");
return '^';
} else
yylval = install_and_save("*");
return c;
2) When exactly does this happen? I've got in mind that substitute(3
-> y) has already flipped the expression; I couldn't figure out from the source what substitute does that would have pinged the YACC...
Of course I'm still speculating here, but yes, I think we can safely assume that when you call substitute(3 -> y), from the perspective of the substitute function, the expression always was y <- 3; e.g. the function is completely unaware that you typed 3 -> y. do_substitute, like 99% of the C functions used by R, only handles SEXP arguments - an EXPRSXP in the case of 3 -> y (== y <- 3), I believe. This is what I was alluding to above when I made a distinction between the R Environment and the parsing process. I don't think there is anything that specifically triggers the parser to spring into action - but rather everything you input into the interpreter gets parsed. I did a little more reading about the YACC / Bison parser generator last night, and as I understand it (a.k.a. don't bet the farm on this), Bison uses the grammar you define (in the .y file(s)) to generate a parser in C - i.e. a C function which does the actual parsing of input. In turn, everything you input in an R session is first processed by this C parsing function, which then delegates the appropriate action to be taken in the R Environment (I'm using this term very loosely by the way). During this phase, lhs -> rhs will get translated to rhs <- lhs, ** to ^, etc... For example, this is an excerpt from one of the tables of primitive functions in names.c:
/* Language Related Constructs */
/* Primitives */
{"if", do_if, 0, 200, -1, {PP_IF, PREC_FN, 1}},
{"while", do_while, 0, 100, 2, {PP_WHILE, PREC_FN, 0}},
{"for", do_for, 0, 100, 3, {PP_FOR, PREC_FN, 0}},
{"repeat", do_repeat, 0, 100, 1, {PP_REPEAT, PREC_FN, 0}},
{"break", do_break, CTXT_BREAK, 0, 0, {PP_BREAK, PREC_FN, 0}},
{"next", do_break, CTXT_NEXT, 0, 0, {PP_NEXT, PREC_FN, 0}},
{"return", do_return, 0, 0, -1, {PP_RETURN, PREC_FN, 0}},
{"function", do_function, 0, 0, -1, {PP_FUNCTION,PREC_FN, 0}},
{"<-", do_set, 1, 100, -1, {PP_ASSIGN, PREC_LEFT, 1}},
{"=", do_set, 3, 100, -1, {PP_ASSIGN, PREC_EQ, 1}},
{"<<-", do_set, 2, 100, -1, {PP_ASSIGN2, PREC_LEFT, 1}},
{"{", do_begin, 0, 200, -1, {PP_CURLY, PREC_FN, 0}},
{"(", do_paren, 0, 1, 1, {PP_PAREN, PREC_FN, 0}},
You will notice that ->, ->>, and ** are not defined here. As far as I know, R primitive expressions such as <- and [, etc... are the closest interaction the R Environment ever has with any underlying C code. What I am suggesting is that by this stage in process (from you typing a set characters into the interpreter and hitting 'Enter', up through the actual evaluation of a valid R expression), the parser has already worked its magic, which is why you can't get a function definition for -> or ** by surrounding them with backticks, as you typically can.
