Though any book on compilers or computation will make some reference to grammar (defining terms such as regular vs. non-regular), it is often in passing. I'm interested in a deeper dive. I believe a lot of the terminology we use comes from Chomsky, but his own books seem to be focused on humans and language learning. I'd like a wide survey of the field, but as it relates to making computers do things or encoding information. Oh, and while I'm being wishful, one written in layman's terms.<p>Is there a "Grammar as it Relates to Computing for Dummies"?
This might be what you’re looking for: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Parsing-Techniques-Practical-Monographs-Computer/dp/1441919015/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Parsing-Techniques-Practical-Monograp...</a><p>Not exactly cheap, but pretty good.<p>There’s also <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Automata-Formal-Languages-Turing-Machines-ebook/dp/B08K4D7Y7W/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Automata-Formal-Languages-Turing-Mach...</a> which focuses more on the Chomsky hierarchy and automata, and doesn’t go into practical parsers and the related grammar types like the first book.
"Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools" or "The Dragon Book" as it is informally known was always recommended on compsci courses I have taken. It has a section within "Syntax Analysis" which covers context-free grammars.
Does 'Backus–Naur form' meet your interest? It is a formal way of describing the syntax of a programming language, but I suspect it is not used much for modern programming languages:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus%E2%80%93Naur_form" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus%E2%80%93Naur_form</a>