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Abstract

This talk will describe a non-traditional functional approach to the classical problems of lexing (breaking a stream of characters into "words" or tokens) and parsing (identifying tree structure in a stream of tokens based on a grammar, e.g. for a programming language that needs to be compiled or interpreted). The functional approach can clarify and organize a number of algorithms that tend to be opaque in their conventional imperative presentation. No prior background in functional programming, lexing, or parsing is assumed.