Parsing (syntactic analysis) is one of the best understood branches of computer science. Parsers are already being used extensively in a number of disciplines: in computer science (for compiler construction, database interfaces, self-describing data-bases, artificial intelligence), in linguistics (for text analysis, corpora analysis, machine translation, textual analysis of biblical texts), in document preparation and conversion, in typesetting chemical formulae and in chromosome recognition, to name a few; they can be used (and perhaps are) in a far larger number of disciplines. It is therefore surprising that there is no book which collects the knowledge about parsing and explains it to the
non-specialist. Part of the reason may be that parsing has a name for being “difficult”. In discussing the Amsterdam Compiler Kit and in teaching compiler construction, it has, however, been our experience that seemingly difficult parsing techniques can be explained in simple terms, given the right approach. The present book is the result of these considerations.