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Suppose I have a grammar such that there exist $n$ production rules which contain only terminal symbols, and none of these rules produce the same terminal (disjoint).

$A ::= x|y|z$

$B ::= a|b|c$

...

$N ::= l|m|k$

Further suppose that I cannot simply merge these production rules together as they are used in different parts of the grammar.

How can I hence determine or rather choose, the start non-terminal $S$, for purposes of $LL(1)$ parsing?

Thanks

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By definition a grammar is a tuple $(N,T,P,S)$ where $N$ is the set of non-terminals, $T$ is the set of terminals, $P$ is the set of productions, and $S \in N$ is the start symbol.

Therefore if you have a grammar you already have $S$ (and if you don't know $S$ then you don't have a grammar).

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  • $\begingroup$ I see, then I have to check with who gave me the productions. $\endgroup$
    – Novicegrammer
    Commented Apr 12, 2020 at 10:50
  • $\begingroup$ A common convention is that the non-terminal at the left hand side of the first production is start symbol. But the given grammar makes no sense, it just generates a set of words from one non-terminal, all the others are useless (as they can't be used at all). $\endgroup$
    – vonbrand
    Commented Apr 12, 2020 at 15:33
  • $\begingroup$ @vonbrand Yes, however I did not list the entire grammar here. $\endgroup$
    – Novicegrammer
    Commented Apr 15, 2020 at 20:47

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