Parsing Techniques – A Practical Guide

The first edition of “Parsing Techniques – A Practical Guide”, written by Dick Grune and Ceriel Jacobs is available for free as a pdf download.

Book Description

Parsing is the process of structuring a linear representation in accordance with a given grammar. This definition has been kept abstract on purpose, to allow as wide an interpretation as possible. The “linear representation” may be a sentence, a computer program, a knitting pattern, a sequence of geological strata, a piece of music, actions in ritual behaviour, in short any linear sequence in which the preceding elements in some way restrict† the next element. For some of the examples the grammar is well-known, for some it is an object of research and for some our notion of a grammar is only just beginning to take shape.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Grammars as a generating device
• Introduction to parsing
• General non-directional methods
• Regular grammars and finite-state automata
• General directional top-down methods
• General bottom-up parsing
• Replacing search by table look-up
• Deterministic bottom-up parsing
• Error handling
• Comparative survey
• A simple general context-free parser

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