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Welcome to Software Development on Codidact!

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Q&A What is Backus–Naur form as applied in computer programming?

For writing pseudocode? No. BNF is a notation—in practice, a family of similar notations, like how Markdown is a family of similar markup languages—for defining grammars. In software development a...

posted 2y ago by r~~‭

Answer
#1: Initial revision by user avatar r~~‭ · 2022-05-08T07:19:21Z (almost 2 years ago)
For writing pseudocode? No. BNF is a notation—in practice, a family of similar notations, like how Markdown is a family of similar markup languages—for *defining grammars*.

In software development and computer science, a grammar is a set of rules for determining whether a sequence of symbols (characters, words, or any other small units of data) uses correct syntax for a given language. Most programming languages have their syntax specified by a grammar, and that grammar is often defined using some variation of BNF notation (although many programming languages impose additional constraints on the rules that BNF may be ill-suited to represent). But a grammar could also be used to define valid data file formats, communication protocols, or many other applications where symbols are being strung together in restricted ways to represent information.

BNF can be used formally, for example, as a way to represent a grammar to a program that will then use that grammar to parse or verify data. Or BNF can be used informally, as a way to communicate to humans what sorts of inputs will be accepted by a program or library. The latter use of BNF might be considered a form of pseudocode. But to say that BNF is a standard for writing pseudocode would be like saying that Markdown is a standard for writing blog posts—the application exists, yes, but it's a rather limited view of the concept.