Reproduce “Parsing TTree Formula in Python” on OpenResearch
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About this paper
Aryan Roy, Jim Pivarski
This work introduces a Python solution for parsing and translating CERN ROOT's TTreeFormula expressions into native Python code, addressing a critical gap for physicists using Python's data science ecosystem. The new implementation dramatically improves parsing speed, achieving up to a 526-fold speedup, and provides a formal EBNF grammar for the TTreeFormula language.
Key insights
- Formalizing the TTreeFormula language with Extended Backus-Naur Form (EBNF) provides a precise and previously missing specification.
- Utilizing a LALR(1) parser with the Lark toolkit significantly improves parsing performance for TTreeFormula expressions compared to previous methods.
- An Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) serves as an effective intermediate representation for transpiling TTreeFormula expressions into different Python-compatible libraries like NumExpr and Awkward Array.
Summary by alphaXiv.
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