misparsed

Misparsed is a term used in computing and linguistics to describe a situation where a sequence of characters or symbols is interpreted incorrectly by a parser or a human. A parser is a component of a compiler or interpreter that breaks down input text into a structured representation, often a tree, that can be understood by the program. When a parser encounters input that does not conform to its expected grammatical rules, it may produce an incorrect interpretation or fail entirely.

In programming, misparsing can lead to errors, unexpected behavior, or security vulnerabilities. For example, if a web browser misparses HTML code, it might display a webpage incorrectly or allow malicious scripts to execute. Similarly, if a compiler misparses source code, it may generate incorrect machine code, leading to program crashes or logical errors.

Linguistically, misparsing refers to a human reader or listener misunderstanding the grammatical structure of a sentence. This can occur due to ambiguity in the sentence structure, unfamiliar vocabulary, or cognitive biases. For instance, a sentence like "The old man the boat" can be misparsed by initially assuming "old" is modifying "man" as a noun, rather than acting as a verb. Resolving such ambiguities requires reanalysis of the sentence's structure. The concept is closely related to syntactic ambiguity.