yuku-parser
A high-performance, spec-compliant JavaScript/TypeScript parser written in Zig, powered by Yuku.
Install
npm install yuku-parser
Usage
import { parse } from "yuku-parser";
const result = parse("const x = 1 + 2;");
console.log(result.program);
console.log(result.diagnostics);
ESTree / TypeScript-ESTree
For JavaScript and JSX, the AST is fully conformant with the ESTree specification, identical to what Acorn produces.
For TypeScript, the AST conforms to the TypeScript-ESTree format used by @typescript-eslint.
Yuku produces exactly the AST that Oxc produces, for both JS and TS.
On top of the base specs, the AST also carries:
- Stage 3 decorators.
- Stage 3 import defer and import source. Dynamic forms (
import.defer(...), import.source(...)) are represented as an ImportExpression with a phase field set to "defer" or "source", following the ESTree convention.
- A non-standard
hashbang field on Program for #!/usr/bin/env node lines.
Any other deviation from Acorn's ESTree or @typescript-eslint's TypeScript-ESTree would be considered a bug.
AST Types
All AST node types are exported directly from this package:
import type { Node, Statement, Expression, Identifier } from "yuku-parser";
The Node union type covers every possible AST node. Individual types like Statement, Expression, Declaration, etc. are also available. See the full list in the type definitions.
Path helpers
Two small helpers are exported for resolving the lang and sourceType options from a file path:
import { langFromPath, sourceTypeFromPath } from "yuku-parser";
langFromPath("foo.tsx");
langFromPath("types.d.ts");
sourceTypeFromPath("foo.cjs");
sourceTypeFromPath("foo.mjs");
Walking the AST
The AST is standard ESTree, and yuku-ast walks it with typed visitors, alias groups, in-place mutation, and syntactic utilities. walk imported from this package still works as a deprecated re-export and will be removed in the next major version:
import { parse } from "yuku-parser";
import { walk } from "yuku-ast";
const { program } = parse(`console.log("hello");`);
walk(program, {
Identifier(node) {
console.log(node.name);
},
});
Semantic analysis
yuku-analyzer builds on this parser and adds full semantics: scopes, symbols, resolved references, closure analysis, and cross-file module linking, computed natively in the same pass. Its walk carries the semantic model in context (ctx.scope, ctx.symbol, ctx.reference). See the analyzer documentation.
Options
All options are optional.
const result = parse(source, {
sourceType: "module",
lang: "jsx",
preserveParens: true,
semanticErrors: false,
attachComments: false,
});
sourceType | "module", "script", "commonjs" | "module" | Module mode enables import/export, import.meta, top-level await, and strict mode. CommonJS mode parses script code whose top level behaves like a function body, allowing top-level return, new.target, and using. |
lang | "js", "ts", "jsx", "tsx", "dts" | "js" | Language variant controls which syntax extensions are enabled. |
preserveParens | true, false | true | Keep ParenthesizedExpression nodes in the AST. When false, parentheses are stripped and only the inner expression is kept. |
semanticErrors | true, false | false | Run semantic analysis and report semantic errors alongside syntax errors. |
attachComments | true, false | false | Also attach each comment to its host AST node. The flat result.comments list is always present. See Comments. |
Result
parse returns a ParseResult:
interface ParseResult {
program: Program;
comments: Comment[];
diagnostics: Diagnostic[];
}
The parser is error-tolerant: an AST is always produced even when diagnostics are present.
Diagnostics
Diagnostics cover both syntax errors found during parsing and, when semanticErrors is enabled, semantic errors that require scope and binding information (e.g. duplicate let declarations, break outside a loop, unresolved private fields).
Each diagnostic includes:
severity: "error", "warning", "hint", or "info"
message: description of the issue
help: fix suggestion, or null
start / end: byte offsets into the source
labels: additional source spans with messages for context
Semantic Errors
By default, the parser only reports syntax errors. Semantic errors require resolving scopes and bindings, which is done in a separate AST pass. Enable this with the semanticErrors option:
const result = parse(`let x = 1; let x = 2;`, { semanticErrors: true });
This incurs a very small performance overhead. If your build pipeline already handles semantic validation (e.g. through a linter or type checker), you can leave this off for faster parsing.
Every comment is always in result.comments, a flat list in source order with each comment's source span:
const { comments } = parse(`// a line comment\nconst x = 1; /* a block comment */`);
for (const c of comments) {
console.log(c.type, JSON.stringify(c.value), c.start, c.end);
}
Each entry is:
interface Comment {
type: "Line" | "Block";
value: string;
start: number;
end: number;
}
The span (start/end) covers the whole comment, delimiters included, so source.slice(c.start, c.end) returns the raw text.
Set attachComments: true to also hang each comment on the AST node it sits next to, read off node.comments. This is what a codegen pass needs, since attached comments move with their node through transforms.
const { program } = parse(`// header\nfunction foo() {} // trailing`, { attachComments: true });
const fn = program.body[0];
for (const c of fn.comments ?? []) {
console.log(c.position, c.type, c.value);
}
Each attached comment is:
interface AttachedComment {
type: "Line" | "Block";
position: "before" | "after" | "inside";
sameLine: boolean;
value: string;
}
position is where the comment sits relative to its host: "before" (leading), "after" (trailing), or "inside" (interior to an otherwise empty host like function f() { /* hi */ }). sameLine is true when the comment shares a source line with the host's adjacent edge.
License
MIT