Appendix A Glossary
- In semantic 1.4, a BNF file represented “Bovine Normal Form”, the
grammar file used for the 1.4 parser generator. This was a play on
Backus-Naur Form which proved too confusing.
- A verb representing what happens when a bovine parser parses a file.
- bovine lambda
- In a bovine, or LL parser, the bovine lambda is a function to execute
when a specific set of match rules has succeeded in matching text from
- bovine parser
- A parser using the bovine parser generator. It is an LL parser
suitable for small simple languages.
- A program which converts text into a stream of tokens by analyzing
them lexically. Lexers will commonly create strings, symbols,
keywords and punctuation, and strip whitespaces and comments.
- A nonterminal symbol or simply a nonterminal stands for a class of
syntactically equivalent groupings. A nonterminal symbol name is used
in writing grammar rules.
- Some functions are defined via
These can be overloaded via ....
- A program that converts tokens to tags.
- A tag is a representation of some entity in a language file, such as a
function, variable, or include statement. In semantic, the word tag is
used the same way it is used for the etags or ctags tools.
A tag is usually bound to a buffer region via overlay, or it just
specifies character locations in a file.
- A single atomic item returned from a lexer. It represents some set
of characters found in a buffer.
- token stream
- The output of the lexer as well as the input to the parser.
- wisent parser
- A parser using the wisent parser generator. It is a port of bison to
Emacs Lisp. It is an LALR parser suitable for complex languages.