Take the 2-minute tour ×

What are the best (or any) open source libraries for regular or context-free grammar inference from a set of examples believed to be generated by a common grammar? I'd prefer a good library in Java, Python or Ruby, but of course beggars can't be choosers.

I did some googling, but couldn't find any actual implementations, though I did find plenty of interesting references. This library looks interesting, but I couldn't find it available for download anywhere.

Edit (2011-11-14): For clarity (though I'm not sure how you all misunderstood), the question was about grammar inference, not grammar generation or parsing. In other words, given a set of strings which accord to an unknown grammar, find the most restrictive grammar which they all satisfy.

share|improve this question

3 Answers 3

up vote 1 down vote accepted

I have not used them yet, but I had this identical question and (after much searching) found these two libraries, at very least:

Unlike the other answers to the question, these are actual grammar inference libraries rather than parser generators.

share|improve this answer
Link to other question about this: stackoverflow.com/questions/15512918/… –  Stephen Lin Mar 20 '13 at 17:51

You can have a look at antlr - http://www.antlr.org/ and see if its what you're looking for.

share|improve this answer
That is not to do inference/induction. You are actually supposed to already have the language and just specify it there. –  Albert Feb 25 at 16:09

Take a look at Parboiled: https://github.com/sirthias/parboiled It doesn't generates any sources, just create a class in your app, define a model in it, and make a call from your code.

share|improve this answer

Your Answer


