Vadim Zaytsev aka @grammarware

GraSs: A Taxonomy of Grammar Smells


Organisation
global problems
Navigation
problems with navigating through the grammar
Structure
harmful relationships among grammar components

Convention
violations of visual policies
Notation
metalanguage-related
Parsing
parsing techniques related smells
Duplication
the same fragment is repeated

Underuse
inferior substitutes are used instead of an available feature
Overspec
the same constraint specified through several means
Priorities
not present or circular
Singleton
trivial choice, sequence or conjunction
Combo
double modifier creates an ambiguity
Chant
comments cover up bad code
Deprecated
the use of a feature that is no longer welcome
Exotic
too idiosyncratic notational features decrease portability

Singleton Edit!

Related smells: Incomplete Conditional

The designers of grammar notations, as all DSL designers, try to make them fit the domain, but never achieve absolute perfection. In particular, multiary symbols with arity of 2 and up, are commonly expressed in such a way that allows their use on an empty or trivial list of arguments. Single-element sequences, disjunctions and conjunctions like this are easy to detect and remove by algebraic rewriting.


The GraSs taxonomy is a joint effort maintained by Dr. Vadim Zaytsev a.k.a. @grammarware. Page last updated in March 2021.
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