# What is an unrestricted production?

I was reading an article at

What does "context" in "context-free grammar" refer to?

The production

zA -> xy


is described as being an "unrestricted" production. In what way is it "unrestricted"?

I even visited https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrestricted_grammar

which talks about unrestricted grammar as the one that is comprised of productions which have no restriction on LHS or RHS. On this note, I assume that an unrestricted production is the one with no restriction on LHS or RHS.

What restrictions are being talked about and how is the production free from such restrictions?

A single rule can not be "unrestricted".

The whole set of rules is $(T \cup N)^+ \to (T \cup N)^*$. So the class of unrestricted grammars may use any rule from this set.

Restricted classes of grammars are only allowed to use a strict subset of all rles, e.g.

• right-regular grammars are restricted to $N \to T^*N^{\{0,1\}}$, and
• context-free grammars to $N \to (T \cup N)^*$.

By going through the Chomsky hierarchy, you will note that the rule

$\qquad zA \to xy$

is not admitted in any but the type-0 grammars; try to see why it's not a "context-sensitive rule". That does not mean it is only ever allowed in the unrestricted class -- just that it's not in any on this list. There are many more classes.