I've written a grammar for parsing CSS. In my application, I need to parse declaration lists such as the value of @style in xhtml. eg.

I have a utility class that reuses the Lexer/Parser using a LexerSharedInputState and MutableStringReader (see code snippet below).

			

			final class BrowserUtilities {
			

			

			...
			

			

			private static MutableStringReader stringReader = new MutableStringReader();
			

			private static LexerSharedInputState inputState = new LexerSharedInputState(stringReader);
			

			private static CSS2Lexer cssLexer = new CSS2Lexer(inputState);
			

			private static CSS2Parser cssParser = new CSS2Parser(cssLexer);
			

			private static CSS2TreeParser cssTreeParser = new CSS2TreeParser();
			

			

			...
			

			

			static void setCssText(String source, StyleImpl style) {
			

			

			synchronized (stringReader) {
			

			try {
			

			stringReader.reset(source);
			

			inputState.reset();
			

			

			cssParser.compileDeclarationList();
			

			

			style.clearProperties();
			

			cssTreeParser.declList(cssParser.getAST(), style);
			

			}
			

			catch (antlr.ANTLRException ex) {
			

			ex.printStackTrace();
			

			throw new StyleException("Invalid CSS text");
			

			}
			

			}
			

			

			}
			

			

			}
			

			

			class MutableStringReader extends Reader {
			

			

			private String string = "";
			

			private int pos = 0;
			

			private int slen = 0;
			

			

			MutableStringReader() { }
			

			

			MutableStringReader(String initial) {
			

			this.string = initial;
			

			slen = string.length();
			

			}
			

			

			void reset(String s) {
			

			string = s;
			

			pos = 0;
			

			slen = string.length();
			

			}
			

			

			public void close() throws IOException { }
			

			

			public int read(char[] cbuf, int off, int len) throws IOException {
			

			

			if (pos >= slen) return -1;
			

			

			int total = 0;
			

			

			slurp:
			

			for (; len>0; --len, ++off) {
			

			cbuf[off] = string.charAt(pos);
			

			++total;
			

			++pos;
			

			if (pos >= slen) break slurp;
			

			}
			

			

			return total;
			

			}
			

			

			}
			

			

		

This technique works fine until an invalid source value is passed to setCssText(String, StyleImpl) . This results in antlr.NoViableAltException and antlr.MismatchedTokenException exceptions being thrown which seems to invalidate the state of the Parser instance. Although the MutableStringReader and LexerSharedInputState get reset upon each invocation of the method, the Parser seems 'stuck' on the invalid input from the previous call.

How do I reset the state of the Parser ?

Hope the question seems clear and thanks in advance.