Talk:Terminal and nonterminal symbols

message: This page identifies what the terms are, but are missing why they are called that. jptdrake 17:44, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I suppose you could say that there is a process of successive substitutions involved, and when the process results in a terminal symbol, the substitution process terminates. That's the crutch I'm going use to remember the definitions, anyway. 
Lyle 16:21, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Why

message: This page explains formal grammars, for which there is a page already.  Why not just redirect there, adding the additional material provided here? Rp (talk) 17:08, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: No, that page is already quite large. It's much easier to digest a focused page. II | (t - c) 16:58, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: But this page isn't focused - it explains the principles behind grammars, and we have pages on grammars already. I don't think this page can be cut down to explaining just the difference between terminal and nonterminal symbols, because outsde of the context of grammars that distinction doesn't make any sense. Rp (talk) 10:07, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

text: I'll throw in my vote for keeping this article.  In general, I like bite-sized articles that state definitions, equations, theorems, and such, even if they are largely (or entirely) redundant with long expository articles that contain more motivation and background—and in which the precise statements may be harder to find.  They are useful (to me and, I suspect, others) for quick reference. (That's why I write them.)  False vacuum (talk) 19:20, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

text: But this is not such an article. It explains things that should be explained in other articles, and are. Rp (talk) 10:39, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

text: Terminal and non-terminal functions only corresponds to this article (Terminal and non-terminal symbols) in the case of a context-free language, and perhaps not even then.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 15:31, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge

message: I'd agree with 's above point of view, but this issue may be postponed for now.
However, the article Terminal and non-terminal functions (apparently written from a practical point of view, and linked only from Parse tree and some redirect and some user pages) should be merged in any case into this article; both articles deal with the very same subject. - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 10:53, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Terminal and non-terminal functions only corresponds to this article (Terminal and non-terminal symbols) in the case of a context-free language, and perhaps not even then.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 15:31, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge at least with "Terminal and non-terminal functions"

message: I think it would be insightful if there was an example with english letters and words to compliment the one given in Cyrillic. Because if using Cyrillic gives us a different point of view, than using english would give context to our understanding.
 Using symbols that don't belong to the English alphabet, you will forget the concept of "word" reading the sentences and you get focus in pictoric marks interacting each other: this sentence is awkward and horrible  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.161.247.75 (talk) 07:10, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Example with english letters and words 

message: The "functions" article is a subtopic, and essentially a content fork, of the "symbols" article. Enterprisey (talk!) 05:32, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: See my text of August 2014 at #Merge at least with "Terminal and non-terminal functions"; it also contains a suggestion on how to perform the merge in detail. - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 05:47, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

text: (invited)  I think I disagreed before.  Perhaps Terminal and non-terminal functions should be merged into Parse tree.  Although, a parse tree may correspond to the production tree of a "word" in a context-free language, and, in that context (sorry about that), the "terminal and non-terminal node" labels may correspond to terminal and nonterminal symbols.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 10:01, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: , I would also support a merge to the article on parse trees, especially since the content of the "functions" article is more related to parse trees. My position is that the word "function" is a nonstandard name for this sort of thing, and thus we should end up redirecting it somewhere. , what do you think about merging it to Parse tree instead? Enterprisey (talk!) 20:45, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  Merging Terminal and nonterminal functions into Parse tree would be ok for me. I'd suggest to explain the relation of "functions" to "symbols" at some place in the merged article. (Is "functions" used mainly by lingusists, and "symbols" mainly by computer scientists? Is "functions" a synonym for "symbols", used only with context-free grammars? Are "functions" nodes in a parse tree, and "symbols" their labels?) - I would object to merging Parse tree and Terminal and nonterminal symbols, since the former notion is restricted to context-free grammars, while the latter is not. Jochen Burghardt (talk) 09:05, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed merge with [[Terminal and nonterminal functions]]