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Assignment 3

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35 views

Assignment 3

Uploaded by

ranaateeq
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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• Top-Down Parser

• The top-down parsing technique parses the input, and starts


constructing a parse tree from the root node gradually moving
down to the leaf nodes. The types of top-down parsing are
depicted below:

• Recursive Descent Parsing


Recursive descent is a top-down parsing technique that
constructs the parse tree from the top and the input is read from
left to right. It uses procedures for every terminal and non-
terminal entity. This parsing technique recursively parses the
input to make a parse tree, which may or may not require back-
tracking. But the grammar associated with it (if not left factored)
cannot avoid back-tracking. A form of recursive-descent parsing
that does not require any back-tracking is known as predictive
parsing. This parsing technique is regarded recursive as it uses
context-free grammar which is recursive in nature.
• Back-tracking
Top- down parsers start from the root node (start symbol) and
match the input string against the production rules to replace
them (if matched). To understand this, take the following

example of CFG:
For an input string: read, a top-down parser, will behave like
this:
It will start with S from the production rules and will match its
yield to the left-most letter of the input, i.e. ‘r’. The very
production of S (S → rXd) matches with it. So the top-down
parser advances to the next input letter (i.e. ‘e’). The parser tries
to expand non-terminal ‘X’ and checks its production from the
left (X → oa). It does not match with the next input symbol. So
the top-down parser backtracks to obtain the next production
rule of X, (X → ea).
Now the parser matches all the input letters in an ordered
manner. The string is accepted.

• Predictive Parser
Predictive parser is a recursive descent parser, which has the
capability to predict which production is to be used to replace
the input string. The predictive parser does not suffer from
backtracking.
To accomplish its tasks, the predictive parser uses a look-ahead
pointer, which points to the next input symbols. To make the
parser back-tracking free, the predictive parser puts some
constraints on the grammar and accepts only a class of grammar

known as LL(k) grammar.


Predictive parsing uses a stack and a parsing table to parse the
input and generate a parse tree. Both the stack and the input
contains an end symbol $ to denote that the stack is empty and
the input is consumed. The parser refers to the parsing table to
take any decision on the input and stack element combination.
In recursive descent parsing, the parser may have more than one
production to choose from for a single instance of input, whereas
in predictive parser, each step has at most one production to
choose. There might be instances where there is no production
matching the input string, making the parsing procedure to fail.

• LL Parser
An LL Parser accepts LL grammar. LL grammar is a subset of
context-free grammar but with some restrictions to get the
simplified version, in order to achieve easy implementation. LL
grammar can be implemented by means of both algorithms
namely, recursive-descent or table-driven.
LL parser is denoted as LL(k). The first L in LL(k) is parsing the
input from left to right, the second L in LL(k) stands for left-
most derivation and k itself represents the number of look ahead.
Generally k = 1, so LL(k) may also be written as LL(1).

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