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How do we make sense of a regular sentence, especially when they take us down the "garden path"? For example, when we see a sentence that starts with "The old man," most of us would expect the next word to be a verb. So when we read, "The old man the boat," we have to backtrack to re-evaluate what the subject of the sentence really is. Humans are naturally attuned to parsing grammar in natural languages by analyzing the role and meaning of each word in context of its sentence. However, people may find the idea of parsing a computer language intimidating. In this talk, we'll explore the way we normally make sense out of an expression and relate that to the way parsers are used in computer science. By understanding the way we are inherently programmed to parse sentences, we can better understand common parsing strategies and how we can incorporate those tools into our code. Help us caption & translate this video! http://amara.org/v/GRsl/
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In the talk titled "Time Flies Like an Arrow, Fruit Flies Like a Banana: Parsing For Fun and Profit" presented by Sing-Hui Hsu at Ruby on Ales 2015, the main subject centers on the concept of parsing in both natural and computer languages. The speaker discusses how humans instinctively parse sentences, using grammar rules and context to derive meaning, and draws parallels to how parsers function in programming. Key points include: - **Understanding Parsing**: Parsing is the process of analyzing a string of symbols or words in order to understand its structure and meaning. - **Garden Path Sentences**: The speaker explains what Garden Path sentences are—sentences that lead readers to initially interpret them incorrectly due to ambiguous word placements, such as "The old man the boat." - **Grammar Structures**: Using examples, Hsu illustrates how sentences can be broken down into their grammatical components and how structure can be represented using parsing strategies, similar to computer language parsing. - **Introduction to BNF**: The film introduces Backus-Naur Form (BNF), a notation for expressing the grammar of a language, highlighting how non-terminal and terminal symbols are used to form production rules. - **Computer Language Parsers**: The speaker explains how code is parsed by a lexer that produces tokens, which are then passed into a parser that builds syntax trees, a process essential for compilers and interpreters. - **Practical Applications of Parsing**: Hsu discusses various applications, from validating strings like URLs to converting documents from one format to another. The video also highlights instances where parsers can be beneficial compared to regular expressions. - **Parser Generation**: The talk presents tools like yacc, bison, and rack that help generate parsers automatically from defined grammar rules, illustrating how complex parsing tasks can be simplified. - **Language Hierarchies**: Lastly, the classification of languages into types based on their grammar complexity according to the Chomsky hierarchy is addressed, distinguishing between regular languages and context-free grammars, showcasing the limitations of regular expressions. In conclusion, the session emphasizes that a better understanding of how parsing works—both in natural language and programming—can empower developers to implement more effective parsing tools in their code, thereby resulting in improved accuracy and performance.
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