Efficient Earley Parsing with Regular Right-hand Sides

Abstract

We present a new variant of the Earley parsing algorithm capable of efficiently supporting context-free grammars with regular right hand-sides. We present the core state-machine driven algorithm, the translation of grammars into state machines, and the reconstruction algorithm. We also include a theoretical framework for presenting the algorithm and for evaluating optimizations. Finally, we evaluate the algorithm by testing its implementation.