Patent ID: 8738360

Claim:
A method to process a sequence of characters, the method comprising: receiving the sequence of characters; converting, by a lexer embodied in a processor, the sequence of characters into a sequence of tokens, each token comprising a lexeme and a token type, wherein each lexeme comprises one or more of the sequence of characters, wherein each token type describes at least one of a plurality of predetermined classes ascribed to lexemes by the lexer, and wherein the conversion of characters into tokens includes ascribing multiple, different predetermined classes to a single token using one token type, wherein the lexeme for the single token may function as any one of the multiple, different predetermined classes ascribed to the single token; and analyzing, by a parser embodied in the processor, the sequence of tokens to detect data types within the sequence of characters based upon the token types of the sequence of tokens, including the token type ascribing the multiple predetermined classes to the single token.