Abstract
A (factor-)reference in a word is a special symbol that refers to another factor in the same word; a reference is dereferenced by substituting it with the referenced factor. We introduce and investigate the class ref-REG of all languages that can be obtained by taking a regular language R and then dereferencing all possible references in the words of R. We show that ref-REG coincides with the class of languages defined by regular expressions as they exist in modern programming languages like Perl, Python, Java, etc. (often called REGEX languages).
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Schmid, M.L. (2014). Characterising REGEX Languages by Regular Languages Equipped with Factor-Referencing. In: Shur, A.M., Volkov, M.V. (eds) Developments in Language Theory. DLT 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8633. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09698-8_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09698-8_13
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
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