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On automata and language based grammar metrics

Črepinšek Matej (University of Maribor, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Maribor, Slovenia)
Kosar Tomaž (University of Maribor, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Maribor, Slovenia)
Mernik Marjan (University of Maribor, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Maribor, Slovenia)
Cervelle Julien (Université Paris-Est, Laboratoire d'Informatique Gaspard-Monge, Marne-la-Vallée, France)
Forax Rémi (Université Paris-Est, Laboratoire d'Informatique Gaspard-Monge, Marne-la-Vallée, France)
Roussel Gilles (Université Paris-Est, Laboratoire d'Informatique Gaspard-Monge, Marne-la-Vallée, France)

Grammar metrics have been introduced to measure the quality and the complexity of the formal grammars. The aim of this paper is to explore the meaning of these notions and to experiment, on several grammars of domain specific languages and of general-purpose languages, existing grammar metrics together with the new metrics that are based on grammar LR automaton and on the language recognized. We discuss the results of this experiment and focus on the comparison between grammars of domain specific languages as well as of general-purpose languages and on the evolution of the metrics between several versions of the same language.

Keywords: grammar metrics, software language engineering, grammar engineering, grammar ware