Basic Concepts

Syntax: The grammatical form of programs.

Semantics: The meaning of the program

Syntax typically specified by production rules for a context-free grammar using Backus-Naur Form (BNF) or Extended BNF (EBNF)

Semantics sometimes specified formally with special logics.

More often semantics is described less formally but implemented carefully in the code-generation parts of compilers.

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