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Constructing NFAs by Optimal Use of Positions in Regular Expressions

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Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2002)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2373))

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Abstract

We give two new algorithms for constructing small nondeterministic finite automata (NFA) from regular expressions. The first constructs NFAs with ε-moves (εNFA) which are smaller than all the other εNFAs obtained by similar constructions. Their size is at most 3/2|α| + 5/2, where α is the regular expression. The second constructs NFAs. It uses ε-elimination in the εNFAs we just introduced and builds a quotient of the well-known position automaton. Our NFA is always smaller and faster to compute than the position automaton. It uses optimally the information from the positions of a regular expression.

Research partially supported by NSERC grant R3143A01.

Research partially supported by NSERC grant OGP0041630.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Western Ontario, N6A 5B7, London, Ontario, Canada

    Lucian Ilie & Sheng Yu

Authors
  1. Lucian Ilie
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  2. Sheng Yu
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrial Engineering and Computer Science, University of Padova, Via Gradenigo 6/A, 35131, Padova, Italy

    Alberto Apostolico

  2. Department of Informatics, Kyushu University, Fukuoka 812-8581, Japan

    Masayuki Takeda

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Ilie, L., Yu, S. (2002). Constructing NFAs by Optimal Use of Positions in Regular Expressions. In: Apostolico, A., Takeda, M. (eds) Combinatorial Pattern Matching. CPM 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2373. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45452-7_23

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45452-7_23

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-43862-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45452-6

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