abstract = "Grammar Inference is the process of learning a grammar
from examples, either positive (i.e., the grammar
generates the string) and/or negative (i.e., the
grammar does not generate the string). Although grammar
inference has been successfully applied to many diverse
domains such as speech recognition and robotics, its
application to software engineering has been limited.
This book provides an overview of the area and
discusses the following applications of grammar
inference: 1) Recovery of a metamodel from instance
models: the MetAmodel Recovery System (MARS), a system
that uses grammar inference in concert with a host of
complementary technologies and tools to address the
metamodel drift problem. 2) Recovery of domain-specific
language (DSL) specifications from example DSL
programs: GenInc, an unsupervised incremental CFG
learning algorithm that allows further progress towards
inferring DSLs and finds a second application in
recovery of legacy DSLs. This book is directed at
researchers and software developers interested in
learning about the exciting field of grammar inference
and its applications to software maintenance issues.",