The StreamTokenizer class takes an input stream and parses it into "tokens", allowing the tokens to be read one at a time. The parsing process is controlled by a table and a number of flags that can be set to various states. The stream tokenizer can recognize identifiers, numbers, quoted strings, and various comment styles.

Each byte read from the input stream is regarded as a character in the range '\u0000' through '\u00FF'. The character value is used to look up five possible attributes of the character: white space, alphabetic, numeric, string quote, and comment character. Each character can have zero or more of these attributes.

In addition, an instance has four flags. These flags indicate:

• Whether line terminators are to be returned as tokens or treated as white space that merely separates tokens.
• Whether C-style comments are to be recognized and skipped.
• Whether C++-style comments are to be recognized and skipped.
• Whether the characters of identifiers are converted to lowercase.

A typical application first constructs an instance of this class, sets up the syntax tables, and then repeatedly loops calling the nextToken method in each iteration of the loop until it returns the value TT_EOF.

After a call to the nextToken method, this field contains the type of the token just read. For a single character token, its value is the single character, converted to an integer. For a quoted string token, its value is the quote character. Otherwise, its value is one of the following:

• TT_WORD indicates that the token is a word.
• TT_NUMBER indicates that the token is a number.
• TT_EOL indicates that the end of line has been read. The field can only have this value if the eolIsSignificant method has been called with the argument true.
• TT_EOF indicates that the end of the input stream has been reached.

The initial value of this field is -4.

If the current token is a word token, this field contains a string giving the characters of the word token. When the current token is a quoted string token, this field contains the body of the string.

The current token is a word when the value of the ttype field is TT_WORD. The current token is a quoted string token when the value of the ttype field is a quote character.

The initial value of this field is null.

If the current token is a number, this field contains the value of that number. The current token is a number when the value of the ttype field is TT_NUMBER.

The initial value of this field is 0.0.

Specifies that all characters c in the range low <= c <= high are white space characters. White space characters serve only to separate tokens in the input stream.

Any other attribute settings for the characters in the specified range are cleared.

Specifies that the character argument is "ordinary" in this tokenizer. It removes any special significance the character has as a comment character, word component, string delimiter, white space, or number character. When such a character is encountered by the parser, the parser treats it as a single-character token and sets ttype field to the character value.

Making a line terminator character "ordinary" may interfere with the ability of a StreamTokenizer to count lines. The lineno method may no longer reflect the presence of such terminator characters in its line count.

Specified that the character argument starts a single-line comment. All characters from the comment character to the end of the line are ignored by this stream tokenizer.

Any other attribute settings for the specified character are cleared.

Specifies that matching pairs of this character delimit string constants in this tokenizer.

When the nextToken method encounters a string constant, the ttype field is set to the string delimiter and the sval field is set to the body of the string.

If a string quote character is encountered, then a string is recognized, consisting of all characters after (but not including) the string quote character, up to (but not including) the next occurrence of that same string quote character, or a line terminator, or end of file. The usual escape sequences such as "\n" and "\t" are recognized and converted to single characters as the string is parsed.

Any other attribute settings for the specified character are cleared.

Specifies that numbers should be parsed by this tokenizer. The syntax table of this tokenizer is modified so that each of the twelve characters:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 . -

has the "numeric" attribute.

When the parser encounters a word token that has the format of a double precision floating-point number, it treats the token as a number rather than a word, by setting the ttype field to the value TT_NUMBER and putting the numeric value of the token into the nval field.

Determines whether or not ends of line are treated as tokens. If the flag argument is true, this tokenizer treats end of lines as tokens; the nextToken method returns TT_EOL and also sets the ttype field to this value when an end of line is read.

A line is a sequence of characters ending with either a carriage-return character ('\r') or a newline character ('\n'). In addition, a carriage-return character followed immediately by a newline character is treated as a single end-of-line token.

If the flag is false, end-of-line characters are treated as white space and serve only to separate tokens.

Determines whether or not the tokenizer recognizes C-style comments. If the flag argument is true, this stream tokenizer recognizes C-style comments. All text between successive occurrences of /* and */ are discarded.

If the flag argument is false, then C-style comments are not treated specially.

Determines whether or not the tokenizer recognizes C++-style comments. If the flag argument is true, this stream tokenizer recognizes C++-style comments. Any occurrence of two consecutive slash characters ('/') is treated as the beginning of a comment that extends to the end of the line.

If the flag argument is false, then C++-style comments are not treated specially.

Determines whether or not word token are automatically lowercased. If the flag argument is true, then the value in the sval field is lowercased whenever a word token is returned (the ttype field has the value TT_WORD by the nextToken method of this tokenizer.

If the flag argument is false, then the sval field is not modified.

Parses the next token from the input stream of this tokenizer. The type of the next token is returned in the ttype field. Additional information about the token may be in the nval field or the sval field of this tokenizer.

Typical clients of this class first set up the syntax tables and then sit in a loop calling nextToken to parse successive tokens until TT_EOF is returned.

Returns the string representation of the current stream token and the line number it occurs on.

The precise string returned is unspecified, although the following example can be considered typical:

Token['a'], line 10