Re: First And Follow

"Mr.E" <mr.waverlye@verizon.net> writes:


>...
> As many texts as I've read on the subject I've been unable to create
> first and follow sets. I unfortunately don't understand the math
> (though I got an A in discrete mathematics) or maybe I just cant
> understand all the symbols or think abstractly enough.


I'd suggest that these limitations can be overcome. Though you
haven't yet understood the math, with some coaching, I bet you could.
(I've helped plenty of students through it who hadn't earned As in
discrete math.)


Whether you take that approach or whether you take the approach you
suggest, of looking for a graph formulation, you will make your own
life easier if you first limit yourself to grammars where no
productions have empty right-hand sides (conventionally written using
the Greek letter epsilon). Once you have mastered that limited case,
then you can go back to considering the more general case.


> ... I wondered is it possible to derive the first and follow sets
> of a grammar by building a tree (or graphs) of the grammar. ...


Finding the FIRST sets is a straightforward graph problem in the case
with no empty right-hand sides. Build a directed graph with one vertex
for each terminal or nonterminal symbol. For each production in the
grammar, the graph should have a directed edge from the nonterminal
symbol that is the production's left-hand side to the leftmost of the
symbols appearing on the production's right-hand side. (This might be
either a terminal symbol or a nonterminal symbol.) To find the FIRST
set of a symbol, you just find the set of terminals that you can reach
in the directed graph starting from the given symbol.

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