Re: Operator-precedence v.s. LL(1)

bart@majestix.cs.uoregon.edu (Barton Christopher Massey) writes:


>P.S. -- What's the right word for the relationship between a
>grammar and its language? "parse"? "generate"? "derive"? I
>use "describe", but it would be nice if the world could agree on
>a terminology. I have found that the confusion between classes
>of grammars and classes of languages is endemic among novices
>such as myself, and a stricter terminology might help the problem...


Actually "parse", "generate", and "derive" are all used for different
things in connection grammars.


A string w can be derived from a grammar G if there are productions that
blah, blah ...


The language L(G) generated by a grammar G is the set of all strings that
can be derived from G.


Gammars never derive languages nor do they generate strings.


Parsing a string w that is in L(G) means looking at the derivation of w
and gettinging information out of the derivation.


I think that this terminology is all pretty standard.


I hope that this helps.


-Tom Spencer


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