An Approach Towards Merging Grammars

Abstract

Introduction: Since the introduction of Island Grammars, they have been successfully used for a variety of tasks, including impact analysis, multi-lingual parsing, and source code identification. However, there has been no attempt to automate the generation of Island Grammars. Objective: This research considers the development of a method to automate the merging of Island Grammar components. The goal of this is to facilitate the development of an approach to automate the creation of Island Grammars. The result of this is the reduction in initial effort and maintenance effort required for Island Grammar engineering. Methods: We develop an automated approach to merge the components of grammars. To evaluate this approach, we conducted two experiments, each using a factorial design of five replications each. We randomly selected pairs of grammars from each of three size categories to assess the effects of the merging process on the maintenance effort and complexity of the generated grammars. Results: We found that in nearly all cases, the application of this merging approach reduces the maintenance effort and complexity of the grammars. Limitations: The primary limitation of this research is that this approach is currently limited to grammars written in the Antlr4 grammar format. Conclusions: This work presents the initial steps towards the automated construction of Island and Tolerant Grammars. We have shown that this approach to merging grammar components follows suit with the expectations of Island and Tolerant grammars (reduction in maintenance effort and complexity).