Solidity Parsing Using SmaCC

Abstract

Solidity is a language used to implement smart contracts on a blockchain platform. Since its initial conception in 2014, Solidity has evolved into one of the major languages for the Ethereum platform as well as other blockchain technologies. Due to its popularity, there are many tools specifically designed to handle smart contracts written in Solidity. However, there is a lack of tools for Pharo to handle Solidity contracts. Therefore, we implemented a parser using SmaCC to serve as a base for further developing Solidity support in Pharo. In this paper, we describe the parser creation, the irregularities we found in the Solidity grammar specification, and common practices on how to adapt the grammar to an LR type parser. Our experiences with parsing the Solidity language using SmaCC may help other developers trying to convert similar grammars.