English

Context-free multilanguages

Data Structures and Algorithms 2008-02-03 v1

Abstract

This article is a sketch of ideas that were once intended to appear in the author's famous series, "The Art of Computer Programming". He generalizes the notion of a context-free language from a set to a multiset of words over an alphabet. The idea is to keep track of the number of ways to parse a string. For example, "fruit flies like a banana" can famously be parsed in two ways; analogous examples in the setting of programming languages may yet be important in the future. The treatment is informal but essentially rigorous.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cs/9301115,
  title  = {Context-free multilanguages},
  author = {Donald E. Knuth},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cs/9301115},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

Abstract added by Greg Kuperberg