Complexity Characterizations of Attribute Grammar Languages

Almost two decades after their introduction, attribute grammars [Kn 68] remain one of the main techniques for specifying semantics of programming languages, and have recently been used in new diverse domains. An attribute grammar is a context-free grammar, in which each nonterminal has been endowed with certain attributes which can take values, and each production is enriched with functions whereby one can compute the values of attributes of nonterminals involved in the production in terms of the values of other such attributes. Also, there may be a predicate associated with a production, specifying that a particular relation must hold between the values of the various attributes.