A Syntax-Directed FORTRAN Statement Checker (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A Syntax-Directed Fortran Statement Checker

The purpose of this paper is to present a program designed to verify Fortran syntax. That is, given a line of Fortran coding, the syntax checking program will analyze it for grammatical correctness. However, before the syntax checking program is introduced, the motivation and considerations concerning the notation, methods of syntax specification, and practical implementation are discussed. Included are the flow diagrams, the syntax specification table, and a listing of the code for the syntax checker.

In this paper, a syntax checker is a program capable of analyzing source statements, written in a given program ming language, for grammatical correctness. However, on the basis of the techniques incorporated in the syntax checker presented below, this definition can be made more explicit: Given a set of rules (syntax Specification) for forming allowable constructs (syntactic units), eventually resulting in a statement (a line of code, meaningful in terms of the language being specified) of a language, an analysis of a source statement in that language can be performed (by the syntax checker) by guessing, or predicting, how the statement is constructed and either verifying that this is the case or backing up and trying again, assuming some other method of construction.

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