Skip to main content

Conservative Ambiguity Detection in Context-Free Grammars

  • Conference paper
Book cover Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP 2007)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 4596))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

The ability to detect ambiguities in context-free grammars is vital for their use in several fields, but the problem is undecidable in the general case. We present a safe, conservative approach, where the approximations cannot result in overlooked ambiguous cases . We analyze the complexity of the verification, and provide formal comparisons with several other ambiguity detection methods.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Cheung, B.S.N., Uzgalis, R.C.: Ambiguity in context-free grammars. In: SAC 1995, pp. 272–276. ACM Press, New York (1995), doi:10.1145/315891.315991

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  2. Reeder, J., Steffen, P., Giegerich, R.: Effective ambiguity checking in biosequence analysis. BMC Bioinformatics 6, 153 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Brabrand, C., Giegerich, R., Møller, A.: Analyzing ambiguity of context-free grammars. Technical Report RS-06-09, BRICS, University of Aarhus (May 2006)

    Google Scholar 

  4. AeroSpace and Defence Industries Association of Europe: ASD Simplified Technical English, Specification ASD-STE100 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Kuich, W.: Systems of pushdown acceptors and context-free grammars. Elektronische Informationsverarbeitung und Kybernetik 6(2), 95–114 (1970)

    MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  6. Schröer, F.W.: AMBER, an ambiguity checker for context-free grammars. Technical report, compilertools.net (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Schmitz, S.: An experimental ambiguity detection tool. In: Sloane, A., Johnstone, A., eds.: LDTA 2007, To appear in Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Cantor, D.G.: On the ambiguity problem of Backus systems. Journal of the ACM 9(4), 477–479 (1962)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  9. Chomsky, N., Schützenberger, M.P.: The algebraic theory of context-free languages. In: Braffort, P., Hirshberg, D. (eds.) Computer Programming and Formal Systems. Studies in Logic, pp. 118–161. North-Holland Publishing, Amsterdam (1963)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Gorn, S.: Detection of generative ambiguities in context-free mechanical languages. Journal of the ACM 10(2), 196–208 (1963)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  11. Jampana, S.: Exploring the problem of ambiguity in context-free grammars. Master’s thesis, Oklahoma State University (July 2005)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Culik, K., Cohen, R.: LR-Regular grammars—an extension of LR(k) grammars. Journal of Computer and System Sciences 7, 66–96 (1973)

    MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  13. Schmitz, S.: Conservative ambiguity detection in context-free grammars. Technical Report I3S/RR-2006-30-FR, Laboratoire I3S, Université de Nice - Sophia Antipolis & CNRS (September 2006)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Ginsburg, S., Harrison, M.A.: Bracketed context-free languages. Journal of Computer and System Sciences 1, 1–23 (1967)

    MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  15. Nederhof, M.J.: Regular approximation of CFLs: a grammatical view. In: Bunt, H., Nijholt, A. (eds.) Advances in Probabilistic and other Parsing Technologies, pp. 221–241. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, MA (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Knuth, D.E.: On the translation of languages from left to right. Information and Control 8(6), 607–639 (1965)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  17. Sikkel, K. (ed.): Parsing Schemata - a framework for specification and analysis of parsing algorithms. Texts in Theoretical Computer Science - An EATCS Series. Springer, Heidelberg (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Hunt III, H.B., Szymanski, T.G., Ullman, J.D.: Operations on sparse relations and efficient algorithms for grammar problems. In: 15th Annual Symposium on Switching and Automata Theory, pp. 127–132. IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos (1974)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  19. Hunt III, H.B., Szymanski, T.G., Ullman, J.D.: On the complexity of LR(k) testing. Communications of the ACM 18(12), 707–716 (1975)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  20. Szymanski, T.G., Williams, J.H.: Noncanonical extensions of bottom-up parsing techniques. SIAM Journal on Computing 5(2), 231–250 (1976)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  21. Sippu, S., Soisalon-Soininen, E.: Parsing Theory, Vol. II: LR(k) and LL(k) Parsing. In: Simple Program Schemes and Formal Languages. LNCS, vol. 20, Springer, Heidelberg (1990)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Heilbrunner, S.: Tests for the LR-, LL-, and LC-Regular conditions. Journal of Computer and System Sciences 27(1), 1–13 (1983)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  23. Mohri, M., Nederhof, M.J.: Regular approximations of context-free grammars through transformation. In: Junqua, J.C., van Noord, G. (eds.) Robustness in Language and Speech Technology, pp. 153–163. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Gálvez, J.F., Schmitz, S., Farré, J.: Shift-resolve parsing: Simple, linear time, unbounded lookahead. In: Ibarra, O.H., Yen, H.-C. (eds.) CIAA 2006. LNCS, vol. 4094, pp. 253–264. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Lars Arge Christian Cachin Tomasz Jurdziński Andrzej Tarlecki

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Schmitz, S. (2007). Conservative Ambiguity Detection in Context-Free Grammars. In: Arge, L., Cachin, C., Jurdziński, T., Tarlecki, A. (eds) Automata, Languages and Programming. ICALP 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4596. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73420-8_60

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73420-8_60

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-73419-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-73420-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics