Backus-Naur form (BNF)

  • Authors:

  • Daniel D. McCracken;Edwin D. Reilly

  • Affiliations:

  • -;-

  • Venue:
  • Encyclopedia of Computer Science
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

Backus-Naur Form, named after John W. Backus of the US and Peter Naur of Denmark, and usually written BNF, is the best-known example of a meta-language (q.v.), i.e. one that syntactically describes a programming language. Using BNF it is possible to specify which sequences of symbols constitute a syntactically valid program in a given language. (The question of semantics--i.e, what such valid strings of symbols mean--must be specified separately.) A discussion of the basic concepts of BNF follows.