Associative definition of programming languages

Authors:
Stefano Crespi Reghizzi;Matteo Pradella;Pierluigi San Pietro
Affiliations:
Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione, P.za L. da Vinci 32, I-20133 Milano, Italy;Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione, P.za L. da Vinci 32, I-20133 Milano, Italy;Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione, P.za L. da Vinci 32, I-20133 Milano, Italy
Venue:
Computer Languages
Year:
2000

Citing 5
Cited 1

Contextual grammars and formal languages

Handbook of formal languages, vol. 2
Parenthesis Grammars

Journal of the ACM (JACM)
Noncounting Context-Free Languages

Journal of the ACM (JACM)
Associative language descriptions

Theoretical Computer Science
PASCAL user manual and report

PASCAL user manual and report

Associative language descriptions

Theoretical Computer Science

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Associative language descriptions (ALD) are a recent grammar model, theoretically less powerful than context free (CF) grammars, but adequate for describing the syntax of programming languages. ALD does not use nonterminal symbols, but rely on permissible contexts for specifying valid syntax trees. In order to assess ALD adequacy, we analyze the descriptional complexity of structurally equivalent CF and ALD grammars, finding comparable measures. The compression obtained using CF copy rules is matched by context inheritance in ALD. The family of hierarchical parentheses languages, an abstract paradigm of HTML, and of expressions with operator precedences is studied. A complete ALD grammar of Pascal testifies of the practicality of the ALD approach.