TESTING A CONTEXT-FREE LANGUAGE COMPILER

Systems and methods for testing a context-free language compiler. Given a description of a context-free grammar including a set of production rules, a test component applies the grammar description to generate one or more valid test strings of terminal symbols. A value generation component may replace one or more terminal symbols in the set of test strings with values appropriate for the class of the terminal symbol. The resulting set of test strings may be individually applied to a compiler, which returns a response based upon the applied test string that may be used to determine if the compiler is operating as expected. The set of test strings may be generated using every production rule of the given context-free grammar description. In addition to valid test strings, a set of invalid test strings may be generated by making use of a set of invalid production rules while generating test strings.