Title
A mesh of automata.
Abstract
We contribute new relations to the taxonomy of different conversions from regular expressions to equivalent finite automata. In particular, we are interested in transformations that construct automata such as, the follow automaton, the partial derivative automaton, the prefix automaton, the automata based on pointed expressions recently introduced and studied, and last but not least the position, or Glushkov automaton (APOS), and their double reversed construction counterparts. We deepen the understanding of these constructions and show that with the artefacts used to construct the Glushkov automaton one is able to capture most of them. As a byproduct we define a dual version APOS← of the position automaton which plays a similar role as APOS but now for the reverse expression. Moreover, it turns out that the prefix automaton APre is central to reverse expressions, because the determinisation of the double reversal of APre (first reverse the expression, construct the automaton APre, and then reverse the automaton) can be represented as a quotient of any of the considered deterministic automata that we consider in this investigation. This shows that although the conversion of regular expressions and reversal of regular expressions to finite automata seems quite similar, there are significant differences.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1016/j.ic.2019.01.003
Information and Computation
Keywords
Field
DocType
Regular expressions,Finite automata,Regular languages
Discrete mathematics,Regular expression,Expression (mathematics),Quotient,Automaton,Partial derivative,Prefix,Finite-state machine,Mathematics
Journal
Volume
ISSN
Citations 
265
0890-5401
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Sabine Broda16413.83
Markus Holzer219222.14
Eva Maia3112.05
Nelma Moreira418033.98
Rogério Reis514025.74