L-attributed grammar


L-attributed grammars are a special type of attribute grammars. They allow the attributes to be evaluated in one depth-first left-to-right traversal of the abstract syntax tree. As a result, attribute evaluation in L-attributed grammars can be incorporated conveniently in top-down parsing.
A syntax-directed definition is L-attributed if each inherited attribute of on the right side of depends only on
  1. the attributes of the symbols
  2. the inherited attributes of
Every S-attributed syntax-directed definition is also L-attributed.
Implementing L-attributed definitions in Bottom-Up parsers requires rewriting L-attributed definitions into translation schemes.
Many programming languages are L-attributed. Special types of compilers, the narrow compilers, are based on some form of L-attributed grammar. These are a strict superset of S-attributed grammars. Used for code synthesis.
Either "inherited attributes" or "synthesized attributes" associated with the occurrence of symbol.