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Chapter 12: Context-Free Grammars

This document discusses context-free grammars and provides examples. It defines a context-free grammar as having an alphabet, set of nonterminals including a start symbol S, and productions. Productions take the form of replacing a nonterminal with terminals and/or nonterminals. The language generated is the set of strings derived from S. Examples demonstrate derivations, parse trees, and ambiguity.

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44 views

Chapter 12: Context-Free Grammars

This document discusses context-free grammars and provides examples. It defines a context-free grammar as having an alphabet, set of nonterminals including a start symbol S, and productions. Productions take the form of replacing a nonterminal with terminals and/or nonterminals. The language generated is the set of strings derived from S. Examples demonstrate derivations, parse trees, and ambiguity.

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Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Chapter 12: Context-Free Grammars ∗

Peter Cappello
Department of Computer Science
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
[email protected]

• The corresponding textbook chapter should be read before attending


this lecture.
• These notes are not intended to be complete. They are supplemented
with figures, and other material that arises during the lecture period
in response to questions.
∗
Based on Theory of Computing, 2nd Ed., D. Cohen, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Symbolism for Generative Grammars
• The book chapter gives a good explanation of the background and
reason for studying this material.
• A generative grammar is a grammar with which one can generate
all the words (sentences) in a language.

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Definition A context-free grammar (CFG) is a collection of 3 things:

• An alphabet Σ of letters called terminals.


• A set of symbols called nonterminals, 1 of which is the symbol
S, the “start” symbol.
• A finite set of productions of the form

N onterminal → (terminals + nonterminals)∗


At least 1 production has S as its left side.

By convention, we use:

• lower case letters and special symbols for terminals


• upper case letters for nonterminals.

3
Definition The language generated by a CFG is the set of all strings
of terminals produced from S using productions as substitutions.
A language generated by a CFG is a context-free language (CFL).

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Example
Production 1 S → aS
Production 2 S → Λ
Applying production 1 two times, followed by production 2, yields:
S ⇒ aS
⇒ aaS
⇒ aaΛ
= aa
• The language generated by this CFG is a∗.
• → means “can be replaced by”.
• ⇒ (used in a derivation) means “can develop into”.
• A derivation’s right hand side (RHS) is a working string when it
contains nonterminals.

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Example
Define a CFG that accepts (a + b)∗.

S → aS
S → bS
S→Λ

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Example
Define a CFG that accepts (a + b)∗aa(a + b)∗.

S → XaaX
X → aX
X → bX
X→Λ

Give a derivation of ababaaaba.

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Example
Define a CFG that accepts {anbn}.

S → aSb
S→Λ
Equivalently:
S → aSb | Λ

• Give a derivation of aaabbb.


• Define a CFG that accepts palindromes over {a, b}. (It should include
strings such as aba.)

8
Trees
Given the CFG

S → AA
A → AAA|bA|Ab|a

• Derive the word bbaaaab: S ⇒ AA ⇒ bAA ⇒ bbAA ⇒ bbaA ⇒


bbaAAA ⇒ bbaaAA ⇒ bbaaaA ⇒ bbaaaAb ⇒ bbaaaab
• Draw the tree corresponding to this derivation.
• Such a tree is called a syntax tree or parse tree.

9
Lukasiewicz Notation
• Consider the CFG:

S → +| ∗ |n
+ → + + | + ∗| + n| ∗ +| ∗ ∗| ∗ n|n + |n ∗ |n n
∗ → + + | + ∗| + n| ∗ +| ∗ ∗| ∗ n|n + |n ∗ |n n
n → 1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9

• One possible derivation is S ⇒ + ⇒ 3 ∗ ⇒ 3 4 5.


• Write the parse tree for this is on the board.
• From the parse tree construct the prefix notation by walking around
the tree, writing down the symbols in the order in which they are first
visited (excluding S): + 3 ∗ 4 5.

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• Think of these items as having been pushed on a stack in the order of
visitation.
• To evaluate the expression, when the top 2 items are numbers:

1. pop the top 3 items


2. evaluate that expression (e.g., + 35 evaluates to 8)
3. push the resulting value on the stack

Continue until the stack contains only 1 number.


• Do this for our string of + 3 ∗ 4 5.
• Do this for the following tree (((1 + 2) ∗ (3 + 4)) + 5) ∗ 6. (Its value
should be 156.)

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Ambiguity
Definition: A CFG G is ambiguous if there exists a w ∈ L(G) with
2 derivations that correspond to different parse trees.
If a CFG is not ambiguous it is unambiguous.
Example Let CFG G be S → aS|Sa|a, the regular language aa∗.
The word aa has 2 derivations:
• S ⇒ Sa ⇒ aa
• S ⇒ aS ⇒ aa
distinct with a distinct parse tree.
However a+ can be defined by S → aS|a, which is not ambiguous.

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The Total Language Tree
Definition: For a given CFG, define a tree:
• Its root is S
• For each nonterminal node in the tree,
For each nonterminal, N at that node, construct a child node in
the tree for each production with N as the LHS.
Example Let CFG G be:
S → aa|bX|aXX
X → ab|b
• What is the total language tree for this CFG?
• What is the total language tree for S → Λ|aSb ?

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