Summary
This paper is devoted to the presentation of a two-parameter family M tk of parsers for general context-free grammars; the algorithms have a top-down structure, in which all the possible candidate parses are investigated in parallel. Backtracking is avoided by keeping track of the stage reached in all parses in a set of “states”. The integer parameters t and k describe tests performed on strings of terminals, of length t and k respectively, to the right of the point currently reached in the analysis of an input string. The tests involving parameter k enhance the performance of the parser on grammars with LR(k) characteristics, whereas those involving parameter t are most suited for grammars showing LL(t)-type conditions. However, the use of parallelism enables the algorithm to work on any CF-grammar.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
M. BOUCKAERT, A. PIROTTE, M. SNELLING, SOFT: a tool for writing software, IEE Conference on Software Engineering for Telecommunication Switching Systems, Colchester (1973), Proceedings published by IEE (London).
M. BOUCKAERT, A. PIROTTE, M. SNELLING, Efficient parsing algorithms for general context-free grammars, Information Sciences (to appear).
J. EARLEY, An efficient context-free parsing algorithm, Thesis, Dept. of computer science, Carnegie-Mellon University (1968).
J. EARLEY, An efficient context-free parsing algorithm, CACM 13–2, 94–102 (1970)
M. SNELLING, General context-free parsing in time n2, ACM Int. Computing Symp. 1973 ( Davos, Switzerland), Proceedings to be published by North-Holland.
D. WOOD, The theory of left-factored languages, The Computer Journal 12, 349–356 (1969) aad 13, 55–62 (1970.)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1973 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bouckaert, M., Pirotte, A., Snelling, M. (1973). Improvements to Earley’s Context-Free Parser. In: Brauer, W. (eds) GI Gesellschaft für Informatik e. V.. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-41148-3_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-41148-3_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-662-40668-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-662-41148-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive