What is the primary function of the Syntax Analysis (Parsing) phase in a compiler?
Syntax analysis accepts the stream of tokens generated by the lexical analyzer and verifies whether the sequence conforms to the syntactic rules of the programming language (defined by a CFG), outputting a parse tree or syntax tree.
Which formal grammar model is universally employed by compiler parsers to specify the syntax of programming languages?
Programming language syntax (such as nested blocks, balanced parentheses, and expression structures) is defined using Context-Free Grammars (CFGs), which are recognized by Pushdown Automata.
[BPSC TRE 2.0 Class 9-10 PYQ] Which of the following approaches is used by compilers for syntax analysis and parsing?
Compilers utilize both Top-down parsing (e.g., LL(1), Recursive Descent) and Bottom-up parsing (e.g., Shift-Reduce, LR, LALR) strategies depending on design and parser generator tools.
A Context-Free Grammar is defined as 'Ambiguous' if:
Ambiguity in a CFG means there exists at least one sentence in the language that has two or more distinct parse trees (or leftmost/rightmost derivations), leading to semantic ambiguity in compilation.
Which type of derivation is constructed when executing a Top-Down parser?
Top-down parsers build parse trees starting from the root (start symbol) down to the leaves, replacing the leftmost non-terminal at each step, thus generating a leftmost derivation.