Ink Language Parser
Develop a simple parser in your preferred programming language that can read and interpret basic constructs of the Ink narrative language which is an English like language to write interactive fictions.
The idea of this exercise is to learn writing parsers and understand connected challenges. The recommended way to go about this exercise is to first write the parser from scratch (starting from pure RegEx) and the use common parsing frameworks or approaches.
Here are a few expectations from your program:
- Your parser library (or cli tool) should expose two functions,
parsefor taking Ink string and returning a structured data, andformatfor taking structured Ink data and returning formatted Ink string. - It should be able to recognize and handle basic Ink syntax, such as:
- Knots and Diverts (e.g.,
== knot_name -> divert_target) - Choices (e.g.,
* [Choice 1] Text of choice 1) - Conditional logic (e.g.,
{ condition: True branch | False branch })
- Knots and Diverts (e.g.,
- Implement informative error handling for unrecognized syntax.
Testing
There are no tests for this exercise as of now. You should write your own example Ink
samples and check something like format(parse(original_text)) == original_text
Tip
Since you are writing the parser for Ink, you can also make a CLI tool that executes the story. You can take design inspiration from Inky.