What is parsing? Explain any three parsing techniques.

Parsing is the process of analyzing a text, made of a sequence of tokens, to determine its grammatical structure with respect to a given formal grammer. Parsing is also known as syntactic analysis and parser is used for analyzing a text. The task of the parser is essentially to determine if and how the input can be derived from the start symbol of the grammar.

Following are three parsing techniques:
Top-down parsing - 
Top-down parsing can be viewed as an attempt to find left-most derivations of an input-stream by searching for parse trees using a top-down expansion of the given formal grammar rules. Tokens are consumed from left to right. Inclusive choice is used to accommodate ambiguity by expanding all alternative right- hand-sides of grammar rules.
 
Bottom-up parsing - 
A parser can start with the input and attempt to rewrite it to the start symbol. Intuitively, the parser attempts to locate the most basic elements, then the elements containing these, and so on. LR parsers are examples of bottom-up parsers. Another term used for this type of parser is Shift-Reduce parsing.

Recursive descent parsing- 
It is a top down parsing without backtracking. This parsing technique uses a set of recursive procedures to perform parsing. Salient advantages of recursive descent parsing are its simplicity and generality. It can be implemented in any language supporting recursive procedures.