Van Wijngaarden grammar

In computer science, a Van Wijngaarden grammar (also vW-grammar or W-grammar) is a two-level grammar which provides a technique to define potentially infinite context-free grammars in a finite number of rules. The formalism was invented by Adriaan van Wijngaarden to define rigorously some syntactic restrictions which previously had to be formulated in natural language, despite their essentially syntactical content. Typical applications are the treatment of gender and number in natural language syntax and the well-definedness of identifiers in programming languages.