VAST: Parser Detection Tool

The VAST parser detection leverages a dialect-based approach, where program data manipulation is abstracted and reduced to a parser dialect. This results in an MLIR representation that combines control-flow constructs with parser-specific operations.

To generate this representation, we provide the vast-detect-parsers tool—a customized version of mlir-opt that converts VAST dialects into the parser dialect. To use the tool, simply run:

vast-detect-parsers -vast-hl-to-parser <input.mlir>

Parser conversion can be enhanced with the use of function models, which specify how functions in programs should be interpreted. A default set of models is provided in Conversion/Parser/default-parsers-config.yaml. Additional configurations can be supplied via a pass parameter.