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From what I've read, an example of infinite ambiguity is usually given in a form of a loop:

$S \rightarrow aA \\ A \rightarrow B \\ B \rightarrow A \\ B \rightarrow b$

But a grammar is called ambiguous if there's more than 1 way to derive the input string ω. What if I then take this well-known ambiguous grammar:

$S \rightarrow SSS \\ S \rightarrow SS \\ S \rightarrow b$

and extend it with $S \rightarrow \epsilon$ so that for any member of $\left\{ b^n \middle| n \geq 0\right\}$ there's infinitely many ways to derive it? Does this make the grammar infinitely ambiguous?

Raphael
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Jakub Lédl
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1 Answers1

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From a comment by Sylvain:

A grammar is infinitely ambiguous iff there is a productive and accessible nonterminal $A$ s.t. $A \Rightarrow^+ A$. Nonterminals $A$ and $B$ fulfill this characterization in your first example, and so does $S$ in the second example when you add the rule $S \to \varepsilon$. I'll leave the proof of the characterization as an exercise.

Consider that a parse tree of infinite size for a finite input sentence must repeat a nonterminal spanning the same interval in the input.

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Ran G.
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