Panini vs John Backus

. . se224141 at HOTMAIL.COM
Fri Oct 29 07:33:13 UTC 1999


Backus joined IBM as a programmer in 1950. He is the inventor of FORTRAN,
the first high level computer language to be developed. It became
commercially available in 1957.

In 1959 he invented the BNF, a standard notation to describe the syntax of
a high level programming language.

At one place, I found BNF to be described as "Backus Naur Form" and at
other as "Backus Normal Form". Which one is correct?

Panini should be thought of as the forerunner of the modern formal language
theory used to specify computer languages. Why?

The BNF was discovered independently by John Backus in 1959, but Panini's
notation is equivalent in its power to that of Backus and has many similar
properties. Could anyone provide me any example to substantiate this claim?

Thanx/Kailash

Kailash Srivastava





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