A system, method and computer program for validating a syntactical statement employing a stored syntax tree which represents all possible syntax options. The tree consists of a network of junction nodes and data nodes between a root node and an end node, whereby all paths through the tree lead to the end node. Firstly, a syntactical statement is passed to the root node, where it is parsed into elementary tokens. Next, a table is created to store the tokens, and entries representing the end node of the syntax. The location of a current node in the syntax tree is also maintained, whereby the current node is initially the root node. Then, the potential nodes that can be selected from the current node and their distances from the current node are returned. The potential nodes are then compared to the stored tokens, and a potential node is selected. Finally, the location of the current node is updated and the process is repeated until the syntactical statement has been validated.