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.
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