ALL meanings of context-free grammar
- noun Technical meaning of context-free grammar (grammar) (CFG) A grammar where the syntax of each constituent (syntactic category or terminal symbol) is independent of the symbols occuring before and after it in a sentence. A context-free grammar describes a context-free language. Context-free grammars can be expressed by a set of "production rules" or syntactic rules. For example, a language with symbols "a" and "b" that must occur in unequal numbers can be represented by the CFG: S → U | V U → TaU | TaT | UaT V → TbV | TbT | VbT T → aTbT | bTaT | ε meaning the top-level category "S" consists of either a "U" or a "V" and so on. The special category "ε" represents the empty string. This grammar is context-free because each rule has a single symbol on its left-hand side. 1
- noun context-free grammar (computing theory) a formal grammar in which every production rule is such that the left-hand side is exactly one non-terminal symbol and the right-hand side is zero or more terminal symbols and/or nonterminal symbols. Abbreviation: CFG. 0