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Syntax analysis

Syntax analysis is a process on compilers that recognizes the structure of programming languages. It is also known as parsing.

Context-free grammar is usually used for describing the structure of languages and BNF notation is typical to define that grammar. Among tokens include numericals constants and literal string (both called non-terminals) and control structure such as assignments, conditions and loops.

Programs or code that do parsing are called called paser. yacc is an automatic parser generator.


See also: compiler, lexical analysis, programming language

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