Define ambiguous grammar? Check whether the grammar saab, abc/cd, ccd, bc/d is ambiguous or not?
Answers
In computer science, an ambiguous grammar is a context-free grammar for which there exists a string that can have more than one leftmost derivation or parse tree,[1] while an unambiguous grammar is a context-free grammar for which every valid string has a unique leftmost derivation or parse tree. Many languages admit both ambiguous and unambiguous grammars, while some languages admit only ambiguous grammars. Any non-empty language admits an ambiguous grammar by taking an unambiguous grammar and introducing a duplicate rule or synonym (the only language without ambiguous grammars is the empty language). A language that only admits ambiguous grammars is called an inherently ambiguous language, and there are inherently ambiguous context-free languages. Deterministic context-free grammars are always unambiguous, and are an important subclass of unambiguous grammars; there are non-deterministic unambiguous grammars, however.
For computer programming languages, the reference grammar is often ambiguous, due to issues such as the dangling else problem. If present, these ambiguities are generally resolved by adding precedence rules or other context-sensitive parsing rules, so the overall phrase grammar is unambiguous.[citation needed] The set of all parse trees for an ambiguous sentence is called a parse forest.[2]
Explanation:
How do you check whether the grammar is ambiguous or not?
A grammar is said to be ambiguous if there exists more than one leftmost derivation or more than one rightmost derivation or more than one parse tree for the given input string. If the grammar is not ambiguous, then it is called unambiguous. If the grammar has ambiguity, then it is not good for compiler construction.