You specify the syntax of a context free language with a context free grammar. Most programming languages correspond to a special class of context-free languages known as LALR(1) languages. I have spent the past few days trying to write a working Ada/CS grammar, only to discover one laying around on the internet that works just fine. After getting rid of all the Yacc-isms I was left with something useful. I can't believe I wasted so much time these past few days.

I am now trying to parse the output of this program called ilalr, which takes as input a LALR grammar and returns information that can be used to build a program that parses the grammar

Compilers is probably going to be a very hard course.