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Computing the Follow Automaton of an Expression

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Implementation and Application of Automata (CIAA 2004)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 3317))

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Abstract

Small nondeterministic recognizers are very useful in practical applications based on regular expression searching. The follow automaton, recently introduced by Ilie and Yu, is such a small recognizer, since it is a quotient of the position automaton. The aim of this paper is to present an efficient computation of this quotient, based on specific properties of the \(\mathcal{ZPC}\) of the expression. The motivation is twofold. Since this structure is already a basic tool for computing the position automaton, Antimirov’s automaton and Hromkovic’s automaton, the design of an algorithm for computing the follow automaton via this structure makes it easier to compare all these small recognizers. Secondly such an algorithm provides a straightforward alternative to the rather sophisticated handling of ε-transitions used in the original algorithm.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. L.I.F.A.R, Université de Rouen,  

    Jean-Marc Champarnaud, Florent Nicart & Djelloul Ziadi

  2. XRCE, Xerox Research Center Europe, 38240, Meylan

    Florent Nicart

Authors
  1. Jean-Marc Champarnaud
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  2. Florent Nicart
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  3. Djelloul Ziadi
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Manitoba, R3T 2N2, Winnipeg, MB, Canada

    Michael Domaratzki

  2. Department of Mathematics, University of Turku, Finland

    Alexander Okhotin

  3. School of Computing, Queen’s University, K7L 3N6, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

    Kai Salomaa

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

    Sheng Yu

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© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Champarnaud, JM., Nicart, F., Ziadi, D. (2005). Computing the Follow Automaton of an Expression. In: Domaratzki, M., Okhotin, A., Salomaa, K., Yu, S. (eds) Implementation and Application of Automata. CIAA 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3317. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-30500-2_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-30500-2_9

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-24318-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-30500-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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