The G rammar D eployment K it — System Demonstration — Jan Kort

Grammar deployment is the process of turning a given grammar specification into a working parser. The Grammar Deployment Kit (for short, GDK) provides tool support in this process based on grammar engineering methods. We are mainly interested in the deployment of grammars for software renovation tools, that is, tools for software reand reverse engineering. The current version of GDK is optimized for Cobol. We assume that grammar deployment starts from an initial grammar specification which is maybe still ambiguous or even incomplete. In practice, grammar deployment binds unaffordable human resources because of the unavailability of suitable grammar specifications, the diversity of parsing technology as well as the limitations of the technology, integration problems regarding the development of software renovation functionality, and the lack of tools and adherence to firm methods for grammar engineering. GDK helps to largely automate grammar deployment because tool support for grammar adaptation and parser generation is provided. We support different parsing technologies, among them btyacc, that is, yacc with backtracking. GDK is free software. Further information: Grammar Engineering Page: http://www.cs.vu.nl/grammars/ GDK Page: http://www.cs.vu.nl/grammars/gdk/ 1 Email: [email protected] 2 Email: [email protected] 3 Email: [email protected] c 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B. V. Kort, L ammel, and Verhoef