I've been toying with the idea of implementing some sort of DSL on top of python but wouldn't really know where to start.
Would you have any pointers (heh) given the discovery you made?
Would you have any pointers (heh) given the discovery you made?
As far as parsing goes, if you want to stick with python I've had good success with pyparsing [1], otherwise I have a strong preference to do language-related things in OCaml with menhir [2]. I've toyed with wrapping the Python parser in an OCaml library with decent success [3]. But, of course, unless you're optimizing for fun, it's probably a good idea to stick with Python.
Another, weirder, approach is creating a language that happens to be able to be parsed by the same grammar as python, then using a decorator (or similar) to get the source code or the ast to reparse and transpile. As an example you could have something like `a <- b` be the syntax for an actor model message receive dsl (which is valid python).
[1] https://github.com/pyparsing/pyparsing [2] http://gallium.inria.fr/~fpottier/menhir/ [3] https://github.com/georgek42/pyparser