Toward an isomorphic diagram of the Backus-Naur form.

Representation;Isomorphism;Backus-Naur form;Diagrammatic

Neil A. Smith

University:University of Louisville

Department:Computer Engineering and Computer Science

关键词: Representation;    Isomorphism;    Backus-Naur form;    Diagrammatic;   

Others  :  https://ir.library.louisville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2348&context=etd

美国|英语

来源: The Universite of Louisville's Institutional Repository

【 摘 要 】

Computer scientists studying formal languages have made use of a variety of representations to both reason, and communicate their ideas to others. Symbolic representations have proved useful for rigorously defining the theoretical objects of the preceding topics; however, research shows that diagrammatic representations are as fundamental to these subjects. Previous research in this domain has typically been interested in studying the semantics that a particular representation is intended to capture. By contrast, this treatise considers the importance of the format of the representations themselves, and how format influences the ability of a person to uncover characteristics, relevant to the problem domain. More specifically, this thesis investigates the established formalisms that have been devised to describe formal languages, and introduces a novel concept, an augmented syntax graph. This graph, an isomorphism of the Backus-Naur form, is shown to have application in visualizing properties that are pertinent to some parsing algorithms.