October 14 2016 4:15 AM, "Peter Cashin" <cashin.pe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi
> 
> Yes, I seem to remember that Bryan Ford pointed out the “middle finder” 
> grammar.
> 
> It is CF but not PEG:
> 
> s = x s x / x
> i.e an odd number of x’s. There is a similar one for an even number.
> 
> I was interested to discover that this can be done with an extended PEG 
> grammar.
> 
> Cheers,
> Peter.

That is also a PEL (parsing expression language, i.e. recognizable by a PEG), 
you just have to rewrite it:

<S> = xx <S> / x

There is, as far as I know, no known examples of a CFL which cannot be 
described by a PEG. The argument for "CF not-less-than PEG" instead relies on a 
complexity result due to Lee[1] which says that a linear-time CFG parser would 
imply the existence of an efficient O(m^2.333333...) algorithm for boolean 
matrix multiplication. To the best of my knowledge, there is no proof that such 
an algorithm cannot exist, but none has been found despite a mountain of work 
on the subject.

So, the question "CF < PEG?" is currently open: neither a formal proof nor a 
counter-example has been found.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0112018


Regards,

Ulrik Rasmussen

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