A Family of Syntax Definition Formalisms
(Available as P9504-7.ps.gz)
Abstract
In this paper we design a syntax definition formalism as a family of
formalisms. Starting with a small kernel, various features for syntax
definition are designed orthogonally to each other. This provides a
framework for constructing new formalisms by adapting and extending
old ones. The formalism is developed with the algebraic specification
formalism ASF+SDF. It provides the following features: lexical and
context-free syntax, variables, disambiguation by priorities, regular
expressions, character classes and modular definitions. New are the
uniform treatment of lexical syntax, context-free syntax and
variables, the treatment of regular expressions by normalization
yielding abstract syntax without auxiliary sorts, regular expressions
as result of productions and modules with hidden imports and
renamings.