Reverse Engineering Grammar Relationships
Ralf Lämmel, Vadim Zaytsev · 2010
Many software languages (and programming languages, in particular) are described simultaneously by multiple grammars that are found in different software artifacts. For instance, one grammar may reside in a language specification; another grammar may be encoded in a parser specification; yet another grammar may be present in an XML schema for toolindependent data exchange. Ideally, one would want to reliably establish and continuously maintain that all co-existing (potentially embedded) grammars describe the same intended language. Without such guarantee, grammar inconsistencies may go unnoticed, and grammar-based software artifacts may get brittle. Some ad hoc or brute force methods exist to address this problem, but ultimately grammar consistency