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Re: Mathematical Formulas In Programming

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Brian wrote:

> Hi, somebody told me that mathematical formulas can be used in
> programming to represent a list of certain words that you want, but
> that you have to tell the program to convert the formulas to the exact
> list of words.  Is it even possible to do that?

It appears that you are describing a parser.  Essentially, a parser is a 
program which recognizes a grammar, and if you input a list of symbols which 
are valid according to that grammar, the parser accepts them.  Otherwise, it 
throws an error.

The mathematical bit is relevant in a number of aspects, but mainly because 
a grammar tends to be defined as a set of all valid symbol combinations.  

With this approach, although a grammar can be defined through set theory 
notation, a number of special-purpose languages have been defined for this 
purpose, including Backus-Naur form.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus_Naur_Form

So, in short, yes it's possible.


Rui Maciel

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Thread

Mathematical Formulas In Programming Brian <briansipler@yahoo.com> - 2012-12-28 13:17 -0800
  Re: Mathematical Formulas In Programming Jussi Piitulainen <jpiitula@ling.helsinki.fi> - 2012-12-29 11:58 +0200
    Re: Mathematical Formulas In Programming Brian <briansipler@yahoo.com> - 2012-12-29 04:54 -0800
  Re: Mathematical Formulas In Programming Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2012-12-29 13:26 +0000
    Re: Mathematical Formulas In Programming Brian <briansipler@yahoo.com> - 2012-12-29 07:55 -0800
      Re: Mathematical Formulas In Programming Roberto Waltman <usenet@rwaltman.com> - 2013-01-06 16:54 -0500

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