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Operations On Languages

1. Regular expressions provide a way to represent formal languages using operations of union, concatenation, and Kleene closure on elementary languages. 2. A regular expression is defined inductively based on these operations and can represent complex languages. 3. A language is considered regular if it can be defined by a regular expression. Regular expressions capture many useful patterns and properties of strings.

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157 views

Operations On Languages

1. Regular expressions provide a way to represent formal languages using operations of union, concatenation, and Kleene closure on elementary languages. 2. A regular expression is defined inductively based on these operations and can represent complex languages. 3. A language is considered regular if it can be defined by a regular expression. Regular expressions capture many useful patterns and properties of strings.

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Jo Stream
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© © All Rights Reserved
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1 Operations on Languages

Operations on Languages

Recall: A language is a set of strings

We can consider new languages derived from operations on given languages

e.g., L1 L2 , L1 L2 , . . .

A simple but powerful collection of operations:

Union, Concatenation and Kleene Closure

Union is a familiar operation on sets. We define and explain the other two operations below.
Concatenation of Languages

Definition 1. Given languages L1 and L2 , we define their concatenation to be the language L1


L2 = {xy | x L1 , y L2 }
Example 2. L1 = {hello} and L2 = {world} then L1 L2 = {helloworld}

L1 = {00, 10}; L2 = {0, 1}. L1 L2 = {000, 001, 100, 101}

L1 = set of strings ending in 0; L2 = set of strings beginning with 01. L1 L2 = set of strings
containing 001 as a substring

L {} = L. L = .

Kleene Closure

Definition 3.
(
{} if n = 0 [
n
L = L = Li
Ln1 L otherwise i0

i.e., Li is L L L (concatenation of i copies of L), for i > 0.


L , the Kleene Closure of L: set of strings formed by taking any number of strings (possibly
none) from L, possibly with repetitions and concatenating all of them.

If L = {0, 1}, then L0 = {}, L2 = {00, 01, 10, 11}. L = set of all binary strings (including
).

0 = {}. For i > 0, i = . = {}

is one of only two languages whose Kleene closure is finite. Which is the other? {} = {}.

1
2 Regular Expressions
2.1 Definition and Identities
Regular Expressions
A Simple Programming Language

Figure 1: Stephen Cole Kleene

A regular expression is a formula for representing a (complex) language in terms of elementary


languages combined using the three operations union, concatenation and Kleene closure.

Regular Expressions
Formal Inductive Definition
Syntax and Semantics
A regular expression over an alphabet is of one of the following forms:
Syntax Semantics
L() = {}
Basis  L() = {}
a L(a) = {a}

(R1 R2 ) L((R1 R2 )) = L(R1 ) L(R2 )


Induction (R1 R2 ) L((R1 R2 )) = L(R1 ) L(R2 )
(R1 ) L((R1 )) = L(R1 )

Notational Conventions
Removing the brackets To avoid cluttering of parenthesis, we adopt the following conventions.

Precedence: , , . For example, R S T means (R ((S ) T ))

Associativity: (R(ST )) = ((RS)T ) = RST and (R(ST )) = ((RS)T ) = RST .

Also will sometimes omit : e.g. will write RS instead of R S


Regular Expression Examples

2
R L(R)
(0 1) = ({0} {1}) = {0, 1}
0
0 (0 10 10 10 ) Strings where the number of 1s is divisible by 3
(0 1) 001(0 1) Strings that have 001 as a substring
(10) (01) 0(10) 1(01) Strings that consist of alternating 0s and 1s
( 1)(01) ( 0) Strings that consist of alternating 0s and 1s
(0 )(1 10) Strings that do not have two consecutive 0s

Regular Languages

Definition 4. A language L is a regular language iff there is a regular expression R such that
L(R) = L.

Some Regular Expression Identities


We say R1 = R2 if L(R1 ) = L(R2 ).

Commutativity: R1 R2 = R2 R1 (but R1 R2 6= R2 R1 typically)

Associativity: (R1 R2 ) R3 = R1 (R2 R3 ) and (R1 R2 ) R3 = R1 (R2 R3 )

Distributivity: R (R1 R2 ) = R R1 R R2 and (R1 R2 ) R = R1 R R2 R

Concatenating with : R  =  R = R

Concatenating with : R = R =

R = R. R  = R iff  L(R)

(R ) = R

= 

Useful Notation

Definition 5. Define R+ = RR . Thus, R = R+ . In addition, R+ = R iff  L(R).

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