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An efficient context-free parsing algorithm
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Communications of the ACM archive
Volume 13 ,  Issue 2  (February 1970) table of contents
Pages: 94 - 102  
Year of Publication: 1970
ISSN:0001-0782
Author
Jay Earley  Univ. of California, Berkeley
Publisher
ACM  New York, NY, USA
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ABSTRACT

A parsing algorithm which seems to be the most efficient general context-free algorithm known is described. It is similar to both Knuth's LR(k) algorithm and the familiar top-down algorithm. It has a time bound proportional to n3 (where n is the length of the string being parsed) in general; it has an n2 bound for unambiguous grammars; and it runs in linear time on a large class of grammars, which seems to include most practical context-free programming language grammars. In an empirical comparison it appears to be superior to the top-down and bottom-up algorithms studied by Griffiths and Petrick.


REFERENCES

Note: OCR errors may be found in this Reference List extracted from the full text article. ACM has opted to expose the complete List rather than only correct and linked references.

 
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KNUTH, D. E. On the translation of languages from left to right. Information and Control 8 (1965), 607-639.
 
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FLOYD, R. W. The syntax of programming languages--a survey. IEEE Trans. EC-13, 4 (Aug. 1964).
 
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YOUNGER, D. H. Recognition and parsing of context-free languages in time n 3. Information and Control 10 (1967), 189- 208.
 
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HAys, D. Automatic language-data processing. In Computer Applications in the Behavioral Sciences, H. Borko (Ed.) Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1962.
 
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YOUNGER, D.H. Context-free language processing in time n 3. General Electric R & D Center, Schenectady, N.Y., 1966.
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CITED BY  238