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6.10 Backus-Naur Form

The syntax of some parts of the PSPP language is presented in this manual using the formalism known as Backus-Naur Form, or BNF. The following table describes BNF:

• Words in all-uppercase are PSPP keyword tokens. In BNF, these are often called terminals. There are some special terminals, which are written in lowercase for clarity:

  number

  A real number.

  integer

  An integer number.

  string

  A string.

  var-name

  A single variable name.

  =, /, +, -, etc.

  Operators and punctuators.

  .

  The end of the command. This is not necessarily an actual dot in the syntax file (see Forming commands of tokens).

• Other words in all lowercase refer to BNF definitions, called productions. These productions are also known as nonterminals. Some nonterminals are very common, so they are defined here in English for clarity:

  var-list

  A list of one or more variable names or the keyword ALL.

  expression

  An expression. See Mathematical Expressions, for details.

• ‘::=’ means “is defined as”. The left side of ‘::=’ gives the name of the nonterminal being defined. The right side of ‘::=’ gives the definition of that nonterminal. If the right side is empty, then one possible expansion of that nonterminal is nothing. A BNF definition is called a production.
• So, the key difference between a terminal and a nonterminal is that a terminal cannot be broken into smaller parts—in fact, every terminal is a single token (see Tokens). On the other hand, nonterminals are composed of a (possibly empty) sequence of terminals and nonterminals. Thus, terminals indicate the deepest level of syntax description. (In parsing theory, terminals are the leaves of the parse tree; nonterminals form the branches.)
• The first nonterminal defined in a set of productions is called the start symbol. The start symbol defines the entire syntax for that command.