English

A General Framework for the Derivation of Regular Expressions

Formal Languages and Automata Theory 2019-02-20 v1

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to design a theoretical framework that allows us to perform the computation of regular expression derivatives through a space of generic structures. Thanks to this formalism, the main properties of regular expression derivation, such as the finiteness of the set of derivatives, need only be stated and proved one time, at the top level. Moreover, it is shown how to construct an alternating automaton associated with the derivation of a regular expression in this general framework. Finally, Brzozowski's derivation and Antimirov's derivation turn out to be a particular case of this general scheme and it is shown how to construct a DFA, a NFA and an AFA for both of these derivations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1212.5003,
  title  = {A General Framework for the Derivation of Regular Expressions},
  author = {Pascal Caron and Jean-Marc Champarnaud and Ludovic Mignot},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1212.5003},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

22 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-21T22:57:54.503Z