About

BPT - Bash Pure Template (Engine)

Features:

Pure: The rendering process resembles a pure function, ensuring that the rendered results are fully predictable and consistent across multiple runs given the same inputs. It also produces no side-effects other than the generated script or the render result.
- This feature makes bpt suitable for generating a large number of small configuration files without unexpected changes due to an environment variable change or an external file change when re-generating config files.
- A fingerprinting function is provided to digest all the inputs, including template files, variables, and the engine itself.
- Functionalities are also provided to collect all the variables and includes used in a template.
Minimal dependency: bpt requires only a minimal set of external programs in addition to bash. All the external programs required are in coreutils, which is most likely bundled with your Linux installation.
- bash >= 5
- coreutils: md5sum, sort, uniq, cat, mktemp, ...
Single bash script: The bpt.sh script contains everything you need.
- It can be called directly or used as a library by sourcing it in another bash script.
- It works out of the box.
A little bit of extra functionalities: While a simple template engine that only replaces {{var}}s can also be easily made pure, their functionalities are somewhat limited. BPT provides a little bit extra that makes life easier.
- Delimiters can be replaced.
- Branching, list iteration, and basic boolean operations are supported.
- Recursive inclusion of templates is also supported.
- Refer to Writing Templates for more details.

Deficiencies:

Slow: Although optimizations have been made, a LALR(1) parser implemented in bash is still quite slow. It is not recommended to use bpt for large and complex templates.
- The startup overhead is around 16ms.
- Rendering a template consisting of 100 variables takes around 75ms.
- Rendering a template consisting of 1000 variables takes around 900ms, with most of the time spent on reduction.
- Refer to #Benchmarks for more details.

Installation & Usages

All you need is bpt.sh. Place it anywhere you'd like, then chmod +x bpt.sh.

Direct call:

var1=a var2=b ./bpt.sh ge template.tpl     # Render the template
var1=a var2=b ./bpt.sh f template.tpl      # Fingerprint the template
./bpt.sh g template.tpl > out.sh           # Generate reusable script
./bpt.sh g -l '<<' -r '>>' template.tpl    # Customize delimiters
./bpt.sh cv template.tpl                   # Collect variables
./bpt.sh ci template.tpl                   # Collect includes
./bpt.sh -h                                # Print help

As a library:

#!/bin/bash
source bpt.sh
export var1=a var2=b

mapfile -t vars <<<"$(bpt.main cv template.tpl)"
mapfile -t includes <<<"$(bpt.main ci template.tpl)"
script="$(bpt.main g template.tpl)"
render_result="$(bpt.main ge template.tpl)"
fingerprint="$(bpt.main f template.tpl)"

Writing Templates

BPT employs a straightforward grammar whereby any content beyond the top-level delimiters is treated as strings, whereas anything enclosed by delimiters is considered either a string, an identifier, or a keyword. Notably, any string located within these delimiters must be enclosed in single or double quotes.

Examples

Variable Modding

{{var}}
{{var or "abc"}}      # Use "abc" if var is empty
{{var or {{var2}}}}   # Use {{var2}} if var is empty
{{var :- "abc"}}      # Alias to {{var or "abc"}}

{{var and "abc"}}     # Use "abc" if var is not empty
{{var and {{var2}}}}  # Use {{var2}} if var is not empty
{{var :+ "abc"}}      # Alias to {{var and "abc"}}

{{var :? "Err msg"}} # Abort rendering when varaible is empty

{{var % "*:"}}        # Remove prefix until first ':'
{{var %% "*:"}}       # Remove prefix until last ':'
{{var # ":*"}}        # Remove suffix from last ':'
{{var ## ":*"}}       # Remove suffix from first ':'
{{var ^}}             # Uppercase the first character
{{var ^^}}            # Uppercase all characters
{{var ,}}             # Lowercase the first character
{{var ,,}}            # Lowercase all characters

Bash internal variables can also be used:

{{RANDOM}}, {{BASH_VERSION}}, {{HOSTNAME}}, {{PWD}}, ...

Note: It's obvious that using non-deterministic variables such as {{RANDOM}} or {{SRANDOM}} results in impure fingerprinting/rendering processes. $RANDOM can produce varying results in two subsequent evaluations. It is thus recommended to use rand=$RANDOM ./bpt ge ... and use {{rand}} in templates to let the fingerprint command correctly capture the non-determinism of $RANDOM.

Include Another Template

All include paths are relative to where the script is called from ($PWD). Includes are processed recursively.

{{include: "another.tpl"}}

Branching

# Test emptiness of strings
{{if "a": "yes"}}
{{if {{var}}: "yes" else: "no"}}
{{if {{var1}}: "1" elif {{var2}}: "2" else: "3"}}
{{if {{var1}}: "1" elif {{var2}}: "2" elif {{var3}}: "3" else: "4"}}

# Compare integers
{{if "1" -lt "2": "yes"}}
{{if "1" -gt "2": "no"}}
{{if "1" -le "2": "yes"}}
{{if "1" -ge "2": "no"}}
{{if "1" -eq "2": "no"}}
{{if "1" -ne "2": "yes"}}

# Compare strings
{{if "abc" < "def": "yes"}}
{{if "abc" > "def": "no"}}
{{if "abc" == "def": "yes"}}
{{if "abc" != "def": "no"}}
{{if ! "abc" == "def": "yes"}}
{{if "abc" =~ "a.*": "yes"}}

# Combined comparison
{{if "a" or "": "yes"}}
{{if ("1" -lt "2" or "") and (("a" < "b") or "abc"): "yes"}}

# Shorthands
{{""}}                    # 'false'
{{"a"}}                   # 'true'
{{"a": "yes"}}            # 'yes'
{{{{var}}: "yes": "no"}}  # 'yes' if {{var}} is not empty, otherwise 'no'

Iterate a List

{{for var in "a" "b" "c": {{var}}","}}
{{for var in {{seq: "5"}}: {{var}}","}}

Builtin Functions

Currently we only support seq, len, quote, cat and split. The seq builtin is a wrapper of the seq executable in coreutils. The others are implemented in pure bash.

{{len: "abc"}}                                  # 3
{{seq: "3"}}                                    # 1 2 3
{{seq: "1" "3" "10"}}                           # 1 4 7 10

{{quote: "2 3" "3" }}                           # 2 33
{{for i in {{quote: "2 3" "3" }}: {{i}}","}}    # 2 33,

{{cat: "2 3" "3" }}                             # 2 33
{{for i in {{cat: "2 3" "3" }}: {{i}}","}}      # 2,33,

{{split: "2 3" "3" }}                           # 2 3 3
{{for i in {{split: "2 3" "3" }}: {{i}}","}}    # 2,3,3,

Mixture of the above

obj1=Pen obj2=Apple obj3=Pineapple ./bpt.sh ge <<-EOF
{{for i in {{seq: "2"}}:
  {{for j in "Uh! " "":
    {{if "i" -eq "1":
      {{for obj in {{obj2}} {{obj3}}:
        {{if {{j}}:
           "I have a " {{obj1}} ", I have "
           {{if {{obj}} == "Apple": "a "}} {{obj}}",
"       }}
        {{j}} {{obj}}"-"{{obj1}}",
"     }}
      else:
        {{j}} {{obj1}}"-"{{obj3}}"-"{{obj2}}"-"{{obj1}}".
"   }}
  }}
}}

EOF

I have a Pen, I have a Apple,
Uh! Apple-Pen,
I have a Pen, I have Pineapple,
Uh! Pineapple-Pen,
Apple-Pen,
Pineapple-Pen,
Uh! Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen.
Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen.

The BPT Grammar

For reference, the complete BNF of bpt is as follows:

DOC     -> DOC STMT
         | .
STMT    -> IF | FORIN | INCLUDE | BUILTIN | QUOTE | VAR | STR .
IF      -> ld if BOOLS cl DOC ELIF ELSE rd
         | ld BOOLS cl DOC cl DOC rd
         | ld BOOLS cl DOC rd
         | ld BOOLS rd .
ELIF    -> ELIF elif BOOLS cl DOC
         | .
ELSE    -> else cl DOC
         | .
BOOLS   -> BOOLO
         | UOP BOOLS .
BOOLO   -> BOOLO or BOOLA
         | BOOLO or UOP BOOLA
         | BOOLA .
BOOLA   -> BOOLA and BOOL
         | BOOLA and UOP BOOL
         | BOOLA and lp BOOLS rp
         | BOOLA and UOP lp BOOLS rp
         | lp BOOLS rp
         | BOOL .
BOOL    -> ARGS BOP ARGS
         | ARGS .
FORIN   -> ld for ID in ARGS cl DOC rd .
INCLUDE -> ld include cl STR rd .
BUILTIN -> ld ID cl ARGS rd .
QUOTE   -> ld quote cl ARGS rd .
ARGS    -> ARGS STMT
         | STMT .
VAR     -> ld ID rd
         | ld ID MOD rd
         | ld ID MOD VAR rd
         | ld ID MOD STR rd .
MOD     -> and   | or    | err
         | pfx   | ppfx  | sfx   | ssfx
         | upp   | uupp  | low   | llow  .
BOP     -> ne    | eq    | gt    | lt    | ge    | le
         | strne | streq | strgt | strlt | strcm .
UOP     -> ex .
ID      -> id .
STR     -> str .

Token mappings:

ld    -> left delimiter, default {{
rd    -> right delimiter, default }}
cl    -> :      ex    -> !      lp    -> (      rp    -> )
eq    -> -eq    ne    -> -ne    gt    -> -gt    lt    -> -lt    ge -> -ge   le -> -le
streq -> ==     strne -> ! ->   strgt -> >      strlt -> <
id    -> [[:alpha:]_][[:alnum:]_]*
str   -> Everything outside the toplevel ld...rd or inside "..." or '...' in ld...rd

Benchmarks

Comparisons were made among some pure-bash template engines that work out of the box in two different settings:

Rendering a simple plain text "aaa": This measures the startup overhead of the engine.
Rendering 1000 variables ${var}/{{var}}/<%var%> whose content is set to a: This measures the variable render performance.

The plain bash processing/variable replacement was set as the baseline. Each test was run 12 times, with the first 2 times as warmups. More details can be found in the benchmark.sh file. If you want to run the benchmarks yourself, hyperfine needs to be installed.

The following results were obtained with Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9900K CPU @ 3.60GHz:

Startup Overhead

Command	Mean [ms]	Min [ms]	Max [ms]	Relative
`bash -c 'echo "aaa"'`	2.6 ± 0.5	1.6	3.1	1.00
`./shtpl 0vars.tpl`	4.0 ± 0.0	3.9	4.0	1.53 ± 0.30
`./renderest 0vars.tpl`	5.2 ± 0.1	5.1	5.4	2.02 ± 0.40
`. <(./bash-tpl 0vars.tpl)`	116.6 ± 48.3	50.9	177.2	45.02 ± 20.66
`./mo 0vars.tpl`	24.0 ± 15.0	10.2	50.9	9.27 ± 6.07
`./bpt.sh ge 0vars.tpl`	47.2 ± 17.5	14.0	57.0	18.23 ± 7.63

Render 1000 Identical Variables

Command	Mean [ms]	Min [ms]	Max [ms]	Relative
`var=a bash 1000vars.sh`	1.7 ± 1.6	0.9	4.7	1.00
`var=a ./shtpl < 1000vars.shtpl`	6.3 ± 0.0	6.2	6.3	3.69 ± 3.41
`var=a ./renderest 1000vars.tpl`	9.9 ± 0.1	9.8	10.0	5.85 ± 5.40
`var=a . <(./bash-tpl 1000vars.bash-tpl)`	883.4 ± 16.9	861.5	906.6	520.47 ± 480.42
`var=a ./mo 1000vars.tpl`	3200.0 ± 92.6	3106.5	3405.4	1885.37 ± 1740.78
`var=a ./bpt.sh ge 1000vars.tpl`	895.1 ± 14.8	886.6	935.6	527.36 ± 486.76

Engines that do complete parsing (mo, bash-tpl and bpt) are slower by orders of magitude than engines that only do pattern matching and replacement (plain bash, shtpl and renderest). A simple profiling of bpt shows that most of its time are spent on the parsing part (time spent on lexing and evaluating the output is relatively negligible).

Contributing

Issues & pull requests of any kind are welcome.

Adding functionalities shall not conflict with or break existing features.

Credits

Grammophone is used to generate the LALR parse table.
bash_unit is used for testing.
hyperfine is used for benchmarking.

License

MIT. See the LICENSE file.

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README.md

README.md

About

Installation & Usages

Writing Templates

Examples

Variable Modding

Include Another Template

Branching

Iterate a List

Builtin Functions

Mixture of the above

The BPT Grammar

Benchmarks

Contributing

Credits

License

Files

README.md

Latest commit

History

README.md

File metadata and controls

About

Installation & Usages

Writing Templates

Examples

Variable Modding

Include Another Template

Branching

Iterate a List

Builtin Functions

Mixture of the above

The BPT Grammar

Benchmarks

Contributing

Credits

License