Wirth–Weber precedence relationship

The WirthWeber relationship between a pair of symbols is necessary to determine if a formal grammar is a simple precedence grammar, and in such case the simple precedence parser can be used.

The goal is to identify when the viable prefixes have the pivot and must be reduced. A means that the pivot is found, a means that a potential pivot is starting, and a means that we are still in the same pivot.

Formal definition

Precedence relations computing algorithm

We will define three sets for a symbol:

Head*(X) is X if X is a terminal, and if X is a non-terminal, Head*(X) is the set with only the terminals belonging to Head+(X). This set is equivalent to First-set or Fi(X) described in LL parser.
Head+(X) and Tail+(X) are if X is a terminal.

The pseudocode for computing relations is:

  • RelationTable :=
  • For each production
    • For each two adjacent symbols X Y in α
      • add(RelationTable, )
      • add(RelationTable, )
      • add(RelationTable, )
  • add(RelationTable, ) where S is the initial non terminal of the grammar, and $ is a limit marker
  • add(RelationTable, ) where S is the initial non terminal of the grammar, and $ is a limit marker
and are used with sets instead of elements as they were defined, in this case you must add all the cartesian product between the sets/elements.

Examples

  • Head+(a) =
  • Head+(S) = {a, c}
  • Head+(b) =
  • Head+(c) =
  • Tail+(a) =
  • Tail+(S) = {b, c}
  • Tail+(b) =
  • Tail+(c) =
  • Head*(a) = a
  • Head*(S) = {a, c}
  • Head*(b) = b
  • Head*(c) = c
    • a Next to S
    • S Next to S
    • S Next to b
    • there is only one symbol, so no relation is added.
precedence table

Further reading

  • Aho, Alfred V.; Ullman, Jeffrey D., The theory of parsing, translation, and compiling
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