The construction of recognizers
A. E. Roberts · 1966
Motivation for this paper arose from the studies directed at increased automation in the construction of compilers for computer programming languages. The concept of “syntax-directed” compiler 1,2,3 has been found useful and has been the source of development of several practical operational compilers. In the construction of such compilers there is yet, however, a considerable admixture of empiricism and art when it comes to the relating of the syntax (or formal structure) of language constructs and their semantics (or interpretation in terms of computer actions). As a step in enlarging the algorithmic theory underlying compiler construction, a simpler problem is considered here. It is hoped to report later on methodology for supplementing syntax rules with semantic-determinative information in a form amenable to a generalization of algorithmic processes developed in this paper.