5/10/2020 Context-Free Grammars | Reading 3: Regular Expressions & Grammars | 6.005.

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Context-Free Grammars
Context-Free Grammars
In general, a language that can be expressed with our system of grammars is called
context-free. Not all context-free languages are also regular; that is, some grammars
can't be reduced to single nonrecursive productions. Our HTML grammar is context-
free but not regular.

The grammars for most programming languages are also context-free. In general, any
language with nested structure (like nesting parentheses or braces) is context-free but
not regular. That description applies to the Java grammar, shown here in part:

statement ::=
'{' statement* '}'
| 'if' '(' expression ')' statement ('else' statement)?
| 'for' '(' forinit? ';' expression? ';' forupdate? ')' statement
| 'while' '(' expression ')' statement
| 'do' statement 'while' '(' expression ')' ';'
| 'try' '{' statement* '}' ( catches | catches? 'finally' '{' statement*
'}' )
| 'switch' '(' expression ')' '{' switchgroups '}'
| 'synchronized' '(' expression ')' '{' statement* '}'
| 'return' expression? ';'
| 'throw' expression ';'
| 'break' identifier? ';'
| 'continue' identifier? ';'
| expression ';'
| identifier ':' statement
| ';'

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