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Early action in an Earley parser

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Abstract

Traditional Earley parsers operate in two phases: first recognizing the input, then constructing the forest of parse trees. Practically speaking, this quirk makes it awkward to use in a compiler-compiler, because semantic actions attached to rules are only executed after the fact. We address this problem by identifying safe Earley sets, points during the recognition phase at which partial parse trees can be constructed; this means that semantic actions may be executed on the fly. A secondary benefit is that Earley sets can be deleted during recognition, resulting in a substantial savings of both space and time.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, AB, T2N 1N4, Canada

    John Aycock

  2. Milan, Italy

    Angelo Borsotti

Authors
  1. John Aycock
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  2. Angelo Borsotti
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Correspondence to John Aycock.

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Aycock, J., Borsotti, A. Early action in an Earley parser. Acta Informatica 46, 549–559 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00236-009-0107-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00236-009-0107-6

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