English

A Complete Propositional Dynamic Logic for Regular Expressions with Lookahead

Logic in Computer Science 2026-02-11 v2 Formal Languages and Automata Theory

Abstract

We consider (logical) reasoning for regular expressions with lookahead (REwLA). In this paper, we give an axiomatic characterization for both the (match-)language equivalence and the largest substitution-closed equivalence that is sound for the (match-)language equivalence. To achieve this, we introduce a variant of propositional dynamic logic (PDL) on finite linear orders, extended with two operators: the restriction to the identity relation and the restriction to its complement. Our main contribution is a sound and complete Hilbert-style finite axiomatization for the logic, which captures the equivalences of REwLA. Using the extended operators, the completeness is established via a reduction into an identity-free variant of PDL on finite strict linear orders. Moreover, the extended PDL has the same computational complexity as REwLA.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.15214,
  title  = {A Complete Propositional Dynamic Logic for Regular Expressions with Lookahead},
  author = {Yoshiki Nakamura},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.15214},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Long version of a paper accepted at FoSSaCS 2026

R2 v1 2026-07-01T09:14:32.287Z