parser

Noun

WordNet 3.0

Noun (1)

  1. a computer program that divides code up into functional components“compilers must parse source code in order to translate it into object code”
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Webster's Dictionary (GCIDE)

parser \pars"er\, n. One who parses. [1913 Webster]

Free On-line Dictionary of Computing

parser parse parsed parsing

<language> An algorithm or program to determine the syntactic structure of ("to parse") a sentence or string of symbols in some language. A parser normally takes as input a sequence of tokens output by a lexical analyser. It may produce some kind of abstract syntax tree as output. A parser may be produced automatically from a grammar by a parser generator such as yacc.

A parser is normally part of some larger program, like a compiler, which takes the output of the parser and attempts to extract meaning from it in some way, e.g. translating it into another language.

(2009-06-26)

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