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Left Recursion and Left Factoring - 2023

The document discusses left recursion and left factoring in grammars. Left recursion occurs when a nonterminal can derive itself, either directly or indirectly through other symbols. This causes issues for top-down parsers. Left recursion can be eliminated by replacing productions of the form A → Aα with A → βA' and A' → αA' | ε. Left factoring involves identifying the longest common prefix between alternatives for a nonterminal and pulling it out to improve predictability for parsers.

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184 views14 pages

Left Recursion and Left Factoring - 2023

The document discusses left recursion and left factoring in grammars. Left recursion occurs when a nonterminal can derive itself, either directly or indirectly through other symbols. This causes issues for top-down parsers. Left recursion can be eliminated by replacing productions of the form A → Aα with A → βA' and A' → αA' | ε. Left factoring involves identifying the longest common prefix between alternatives for a nonterminal and pulling it out to improve predictability for parsers.

Uploaded by

tressapeel
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Left recursion and left factoring

Dr. R Guru
Associate Professor
Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering,
SJCE, JSSSTU, Mysuru
Left recursion
• A grammar is left recursive if it has a non terminal A such that
there is derivation
A + A for some string 
• Top down parsing methods cannot handle left-recursive grammars
so a transformation is needed to eliminate left recursion.
• Left recursion in a production may be removed by transforming
the grammar in the following way.
• Replace A  A │ 

with A  A'
A'  A' │ .
• Suppose there are many number of production
A  A1│A2│….. │Am│1│2│….. │ n

Then replacement of A- Productions by


A  1 A’│2 A’ │….. …│ n A’
A’  1 A’ │2 A’ │……... │m A’ │ 
• Under the original productions, a derivation of 
is
A  A  A  A  .
• Under the new productions, a derivation of  is
A  A'  A'  A'
 A'  .
Example:1
EE + T│T
T T * F│F
F  id│(E)
Left recursion elimination algorithm :
Input :Grammar G with no cycle or Productions
Output: An equivalent grammar with no left recursion.
Method:
1. Arrange the nonterminals in some order A1,A2,…,An.
2. for (each i from 1 to n) {
3 for (each j from 1 to i-1) {
4 Replace each production of the form Ai  Aj γ by the

production Ai  δ1 γ│δ2 γ … │δk γ


where Aj δ1 │ δ2 │ … │δk are all current Aj
productions
5 }
6 Eliminate left recursion among the Ai-productions
7 }
After elimination left recursion

ETE’
E’ + TE’│Є
T FT’
T’  * FT’│ Є
F  id│(E)
Examples:1
S Aa│b
A Ac│Sd │e
Examples:2
A BC│a
S CA│Ab
A AB│CC│a
Left factoring
• Left factoring is a grammar transformation that is useful for
producing a grammar suitable for predictive or top-down
parsing.
• Consider following grammar:
Stmt  if expr stmt else stmt
| if expr stmt
• On seeing input if it is not clear for the parser which
production to use
• We can easily perform left factoring:
– If we have A  αβ1 │ αβ2 then we replace it with
A  αA’
A’  β1 │ β2
Left factoring elimination algorithm:

Input : Grammar G
Output: An equivalent left factored grammar.
Method
– For each non-terminal A, find the longest prefix α common
to two or more of its alternatives. If α≠ ɛ, then replace all
of A-productions
A  αβ1 │ αβ2 │ … │ αβn │ γ
by
A  αA’ │ γ
A’ β1 │ β2 │ … │ βn
Example:1
S iEtS│iEtSeS│ a
E b
Example:2
• S  bSSaaS │ bSSaSb │ bSb │ a

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