Title
On The Average Size Of Glushkov And Partial Derivative Automata
Abstract
In this paper, the relation between the Glushkov automaton (A(pos)) and the partial derivative automaton (A(pd)) of a given regular expression, in terms of transition complexity, is studied. The average transition complexity of A(pos) was proved by Nicaud to be linear in the size of the corresponding expression. This result was obtained using an upper bound of the number of transitions of A(pos). Here we present a new quadratic construction of A(pos) that leads to a more elegant and straightforward implementation, and that allows the exact counting of the number of transitions. Based on that, a better estimation of the average size is presented. Asymptotically, and as the alphabet size grows, the number of transitions per state is on average 2. Broda et al. computed an upper bound for the ratio of the number of states of A(pd) to the number of states of A(pos), which is about 1/2 for large alphabet sizes. Here we show how to obtain an upper bound for the number of transitions in A(pd), which we then use to get an average case approximation. In conclusion, assymptotically, and for large alphabets, the size of Apd is half the size of the . This is corroborated by some experiments, even for small alphabets and small regular expressions.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1142/S0129054112400400
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FOUNDATIONS OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
Keywords
Field
DocType
Regular languages, regular expressions, partial derivatives, conversion between regular expressions and nondeterministic finite automata, analytic combinatorics, average case analysis
Discrete mathematics,Analytic combinatorics,Combinatorics,Regular expression,Upper and lower bounds,Automaton,Quadratic equation,Partial derivative,Regular language,Mathematics,Alphabet
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
23
5
0129-0541
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
12
0.65
10
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Sabine Broda16413.83
António Machiavelo2458.82
Nelma Moreira318033.98
Rogério Reis414025.74