GenericSymbolState

The GenericSymbolState class allows you to add multi-character symbols and obtain a symbol token from a scanner.

Implements: ISymbolState

The GenericSymbolState class allows you to add multi-character symbols and obtain a symbol token from a scanner.

Important points

The idea of a symbol is a character that stands on its own, such as an ampersand or a parenthesis.
For example, when tokenizing the expression (isReady)& (isWilling), a typical tokenizer would return 7 tokens, including one for each parenthesis and one for the ampersand. Thus a series of symbols such as )&( becomes three tokens, while a series of letters such as isReady becomes a single word token.
Multi-character symbols are an exception to the rule that a symbol is a standalone character.
For example, a tokenizer may want less-than-or-equals to tokenize as a single token. This class provides a method for establishing which multi-character symbols an object of this class should treat as single symbols. This allows, for example, “cat <= dog” to tokenize as three tokens, rather than splitting the less-than and equals symbols into separate tokens.
By default, this state recognizes the following multi-character symbols: !=, :-, <=, >=

Adds a multi-character symbol.

public void add(String value, TokenType tokenType) throws Exception

Returns a symbol token from a scanner.

public Token nextToken(IScanner scanner, ITokenizer tokenizer) throws Exception