Formal grammarIn formal language theory, a grammar (when the context is not given, often called a formal grammar for clarity) describes how to form strings from a language's alphabet that are valid according to the language's syntax. A grammar does not describe the meaning of the strings or what can be done with them in whatever context—only their form. A formal grammar is defined as a set of production rules for such strings in a formal language. Formal language theory, the discipline that studies formal grammars and languages, is a branch of applied mathematics.
Top-down parsingTop-down parsing in computer science is a parsing strategy where one first looks at the highest level of the parse tree and works down the parse tree by using the rewriting rules of a formal grammar. LL parsers are a type of parser that uses a top-down parsing strategy. Top-down parsing is a strategy of analyzing unknown data relationships by hypothesizing general parse tree structures and then considering whether the known fundamental structures are compatible with the hypothesis.
Bottom-up parsingIn computer science, parsing reveals the grammatical structure of linear input text, as a first step in working out its meaning. Bottom-up parsing recognizes the text's lowest-level small details first, before its mid-level structures, and leaving the highest-level overall structure to last. The bottom-up name comes from the concept of a parse tree, in which the most detailed parts are at the bottom of the upside-down tree, and larger structures composed from them are in successively higher layers, until at the top or "root" of the tree a single unit describes the entire input stream.
ANTLRIn computer-based language recognition, ANTLR (pronounced antler), or ANother Tool for Language Recognition, is a parser generator that uses a LL(*) algorithm for parsing. ANTLR is the successor to the Purdue Compiler Construction Tool Set (PCCTS), first developed in 1989, and is under active development. Its maintainer is Professor Terence Parr of the University of San Francisco. PCCTS 1.00 was announced April 10, 1992. ANTLR takes as input a grammar that specifies a language and generates as output source code for a recognizer of that language.
Left recursionIn the formal language theory of computer science, left recursion is a special case of recursion where a string is recognized as part of a language by the fact that it decomposes into a string from that same language (on the left) and a suffix (on the right). For instance, can be recognized as a sum because it can be broken into , also a sum, and , a suitable suffix. In terms of context-free grammar, a nonterminal is left-recursive if the leftmost symbol in one of its productions is itself (in the case of direct left recursion) or can be made itself by some sequence of substitutions (in the case of indirect left recursion).
LR parserIn computer science, LR parsers are a type of bottom-up parser that analyse deterministic context-free languages in linear time. There are several variants of LR parsers: SLR parsers, LALR parsers, Canonical LR(1) parsers, Minimal LR(1) parsers, and GLR parsers. LR parsers can be generated by a parser generator from a formal grammar defining the syntax of the language to be parsed. They are widely used for the processing of computer languages.
Recursive descent parserIn computer science, a recursive descent parser is a kind of top-down parser built from a set of mutually recursive procedures (or a non-recursive equivalent) where each such procedure implements one of the nonterminals of the grammar. Thus the structure of the resulting program closely mirrors that of the grammar it recognizes. A predictive parser is a recursive descent parser that does not require backtracking.
ParsingParsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is the process of analyzing a string of symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal grammar. The term parsing comes from Latin pars (orationis), meaning part (of speech). The term has slightly different meanings in different branches of linguistics and computer science. Traditional sentence parsing is often performed as a method of understanding the exact meaning of a sentence or word, sometimes with the aid of devices such as sentence diagrams.
Earley parserIn computer science, the Earley parser is an algorithm for parsing strings that belong to a given context-free language, though (depending on the variant) it may suffer problems with certain nullable grammars. The algorithm, named after its inventor, Jay Earley, is a chart parser that uses dynamic programming; it is mainly used for parsing in computational linguistics. It was first introduced in his dissertation in 1968 (and later appeared in an abbreviated, more legible, form in a journal).
CYK algorithmIn computer science, the Cocke–Younger–Kasami algorithm (alternatively called CYK, or CKY) is a parsing algorithm for context-free grammars published by Itiroo Sakai in 1961. The algorithm is named after some of its rediscoverers: John Cocke, Daniel Younger, Tadao Kasami, and Jacob T. Schwartz. It employs bottom-up parsing and dynamic programming. The standard version of CYK operates only on context-free grammars given in Chomsky normal form (CNF). However any context-free grammar may be algorithmically transformed into a CNF grammar expressing the same language .
