Context free language induction with genetic programming

Abstract

This paper reports on the induction of context free languages using genetic programming. The focus is on language inference, i.e. the inference of formal languages such as those of the Chomsky hierarchy from positive (and negative) sample strings. In this paper, the inference process is extended to the class of context-free grammars. Deterministic pushdown automata are induced from samples of context free languages. The algorithm is a variation of genetic algorithms using free shaped chromosomes to represent the transition tables of the various automata.<>