scholarly journals Regular Expressions with Lookahead

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 324-340
Author(s):  
Martin Berglund ◽  
Brink van der Merwe ◽  
Steyn van Litsenborgh

This paper investigates regular expressions which in addition to the standard operators of union, concatenation, and Kleene star, have lookaheads. We show how to translate regular expressions with lookaheads (REwLA) to equivalent Boolean automata having at most 3 states more than the length of the REwLA. We also investigate the state complexity when translating REwLA to equivalent deterministic finite automata (DFA).

2007 ◽  
Vol 18 (06) ◽  
pp. 1407-1416 ◽  
Author(s):  
KAI SALOMAA ◽  
PAUL SCHOFIELD

It is known that the neighborhood of a regular language with respect to an additive distance is regular. We introduce an additive weighted finite automaton model that provides a conceptually simple way to reprove this result. We consider the state complexity of converting additive weighted finite automata to deterministic finite automata. As our main result we establish a tight upper bound for the state complexity of the conversion.


2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (02) ◽  
pp. 211-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hae-Sung Eom ◽  
Yo-Sub Han ◽  
Kai Salomaa

We investigate the state complexity of multiple unions and of multiple intersections for prefix-free regular languages. Prefix-free deterministic finite automata have their own unique structural properties that are crucial for obtaining state complexity upper bounds that are improved from those for general regular languages. We present a tight lower bound construction for k-union using an alphabet of size k + 1 and for k-intersection using a binary alphabet. We prove that the state complexity upper bound for k-union cannot be reached by languages over an alphabet with less than k symbols. We also give a lower bound construction for k-union using a binary alphabet that is within a constant factor of the upper bound.


Axioms ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 338
Author(s):  
Cezar Câmpeanu

Deterministic Finite Cover Automata (DFCA) are compact representations of finite languages. Deterministic Finite Automata with “do not care” symbols and Multiple Entry Deterministic Finite Automata are both compact representations of regular languages. This paper studies the benefits of combining these representations to get even more compact representations of finite languages. DFCAs are extended by accepting either “do not care” symbols or considering multiple entry DFCAs. We study for each of the two models the existence of the minimization or simplification algorithms and their computational complexity, the state complexity of these representations compared with other representations of the same language, and the bounds for state complexity in case we perform a representation transformation. Minimization for both models proves to be NP-hard. A method is presented to transform minimization algorithms for deterministic automata into simplification algorithms applicable to these extended models. DFCAs with “do not care” symbols prove to have comparable state complexity as Nondeterministic Finite Cover Automata. Furthermore, for multiple entry DFCAs, we can have a tight estimate of the state complexity of the transformation into equivalent DFCA.


2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (01) ◽  
pp. 115-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michal Hospodár ◽  
Galina Jirásková ◽  
Peter Mlynárčik

We examine the descriptional complexity of the forever operator, which assigns the language [Formula: see text] to a regular language [Formula: see text], and we investigate the trade-offs between various models of finite automata. We consider complete and partial deterministic finite automata, nondeterministic finite automata with single or multiple initial states, alternating, and Boolean finite automata. We assume that the argument and the result of this operation are accepted by automata belonging to one of these six models. We investigate all possible trade-offs and provide a tight upper bound for 32 of 36 of them. The most interesting result is the trade-off from nondeterministic to deterministic automata given by the Dedekind number [Formula: see text]. We also prove that the nondeterministic state complexity of [Formula: see text] is [Formula: see text] which solves an open problem stated by Birget [The state complexity of [Formula: see text] and its connection with temporal logic, Inform. Process. Lett. 58 (1996) 185–188].


2009 ◽  
Vol 20 (04) ◽  
pp. 669-684 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARCO ALMEIDA ◽  
NELMA MOREIRA ◽  
ROGÉRIO REIS

Antimirov and Mosses proposed a rewrite system for deciding the equivalence of two (extended) regular expressions. They argued that this method could lead to a better average-case algorithm than those based on the comparison of the equivalent minimal deterministic finite automata. In this paper we present a functional approach to that method, prove its correctness, and give some experimental comparative results. Besides an improved functional version of Antimirov and Mosses's algorithm, we present an alternative one using partial derivatives. Our preliminary results lead to the conclusion that, indeed, these methods are feasible and, most of the time, faster than the classical methods.


2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (07) ◽  
pp. 863-878 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yo-Sub Han ◽  
Sang-Ki Ko ◽  
Timothy Ng ◽  
Kai Salomaa

It is well known that the resulting language obtained by inserting a regular language to a regular language is regular. We study the nondeterministic and deterministic state complexity of the insertion operation. Given two incomplete DFAs of sizes m and n, we give an upper bound (m+2)·2mn−m−1·3m and find a lower bound for an asymp-totically tight bound. We also present the tight nondeterministic state complexity by a fooling set technique. The deterministic state complexity of insertion is 2Θ(mn) and the nondeterministic state complexity of insertion is precisely mn+2m, where m and n are the size of input finite automata. We also consider the state complexity of insertion in the case where the inserted language is bifix-free or non-returning.


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