[comp.ai] Bidirectional Grammars - Request for References

richard@satori.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Richard Hagen) (01/08/90)

Has anyone seen any references for the problems/advantages of bidirectional
grammars? I'm working on an implementation in NU-Prolog, but *any* pointers
would be appreciated.

Thanks,

richard

cleary@cpsc.ucalgary.ca (John Cleary) (01/09/90)

In article <2980@munnari.oz.au>, richard@satori.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Richard Hagen) writes:
> Has anyone seen any references for the problems/advantages of bidirectional
> grammars? I'm working on an implementation in NU-Prolog, but *any* pointers
> would be appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> richard


I have done this a number of times, at least once to actually achieve something
other than an academic exercise.
What you have to realize is that you need a breadth first search to get 
a reasonably interesting behaviour when you reverse the grammar.
The easiest way to do a breadth first search is to use a bounded depth search
where the depth is increased after all the solutions at the earlier depth are
found.  It is straightforward to write an interpreter to do this, and if
you are a little more bold you can even compile away the interpreter.

		John Cleary