Mini-tutorial on grammars, why context-free is a special case(subset) of

["Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>]

Hi Folks,

XML is all about creating grammars. So the more you know about grammars, the better foundation you will have for creating and using XML.

I created a short tutorial:

http://www.xfront.com/Context-free-grammars-are-a-subset-of-context-sensitive-grammars.pptx 

It starts with a brief refresher on formal grammars. It then explains what a context-sensitive grammar is, followed by an explanation of what a context-free grammar is. Then it shows how context-free grammars are a special case (subset) of context-sensitive grammars. Showing this involves uses a closure algorithm, which is quite nifty. It wraps up the mini-tutorial with a succinct, formal definition of the closure algorithm, which I like to call "pure knowledge."

/Roger