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Regular Expression: Dept. of Computer Science Faculty of Science and Technology

This document provides an overview of a lecture on regular expressions. It defines regular expressions, outlines the rules and basis for constructing regular expressions, and provides examples. The objectives are for students to understand the basic concept of regular expressions and be able to design a nondeterministic finite automaton from a regular expression. Examples show how to write regular expressions to represent languages over different alphabets and the operations on those languages. Exercises and references are also included.

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Rokey Ahmed
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119 views

Regular Expression: Dept. of Computer Science Faculty of Science and Technology

This document provides an overview of a lecture on regular expressions. It defines regular expressions, outlines the rules and basis for constructing regular expressions, and provides examples. The objectives are for students to understand the basic concept of regular expressions and be able to design a nondeterministic finite automaton from a regular expression. Examples show how to write regular expressions to represent languages over different alphabets and the operations on those languages. Exercises and references are also included.

Uploaded by

Rokey Ahmed
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Regular Expression

Course Code:CSC3220 Course Title: Compiler Design

Dept. of Computer Science


Faculty of Science and Technology

Lecturer No: Week No: Semester:


Lecturer:
Lecture Outline

1. Definition of a Regular Expression


2. Rules of a Regular Expression
3. Examples
4. Exercises
Objectives and Outcomes

Objectives:
 Understand the basic concept of Regular expression
 Understand the regular expression algorithm

Outcome:
 Students should be able to design the nondeterministic finite automate (NFA)
from regular expression.
 Students should be able to know the applications of a regular expression.
Regular Expression
Definition: A sequence of symbols and characters expressing a string or pattern to be
searched for within a longer piece of text.

Another words to say a regular expression is a method used in programming for pattern
matching. Regular expressions provide a flexible and concise means to match strings of
text.
Regular Expression
The regular expressions are built recursively out of smaller regular expressions,
using some rules.

Each regular expression r denotes a language L(r), which is also defined


recursively from the languages denoted by r ' s subexpressions.
Rules of Regular Expression

Here are the rules that define the regular expressions over some alphabet £ and the
languages that those expressions denote.

 Basis
 Induction
 Precedence
Rules of Regular Expression

BASIS: There are two rules that form the basis:

 E is a regular expression, and L(E) is {E}, that is, the language whose sole
member is the empty string. (Epsilon)

 If a is a symbol in E, then a is a regular expression, and L(a) = {a}, that is, the
language with one string, of length one, with a in its one position. Here italics
is used for symbols, and boldface for their corresponding regular expression.
Rules of Regular Expression

INDUCTION: There are four parts to the induction. Suppose r and s are regular
expressions denoting languages L(r) and L(s), respectively.

 (r)|(s) is a regular expression denoting the language L(r) U L(s).

 (r)(s) is a regular expression denoting the language L(r)L(s).

 (r)* is a regular expression denoting (L(r))*.

 (r) is a regular expression denoting L(r).The last rule says that we can add
additional pairs of parentheses around expressions without changing the
language they denote.
Example of a Regular expression

Let E = {a, b}.

 1. The regular expression a|b denotes the language {a, b}.

 2. (a|b)(a|b) denotes {aa, ab, ba, bb}, the language of all strings of length
two over the alphabet E.

 Another regular expression for the same language is aa|ab|ba|bb.

 3. a* denotes the language consisting of all strings of zero or more a's, that is,
{ E, a , a a , a a a , . . . }.
Example of a Regular expression

Let E = {a, b}.

 4. (a|b)* denotes the set of all strings consisting of zero or more instances of
a or b, that is, all strings of a's and b's: {E ,a, b,aa, ab, ba, bb,aaa,...}.

 Another regular expression for the same language is (a*b*)*.

 a|a*b denotes the language {a, b, ab, aab, aaab,...}, that is, the string a and
all strings consisting of zero or more a's and ending in b.
Operations of a Regular expression

Operations:
The various operations on languages are:

 Union of two languages L and M is written as


L U M = {s | s is in L or s is in M}
 Concatenation of two languages L and M is written as
LM = {st | s is in L and t is in M}
 The Kleene Closure of a language L is written as
L* = Zero or more occurrence of language L.

Kleen positive L+ = L* – {e}


Regular Expression To NFA
Outline the NFA generated by the construction of Thompson relevant to the following
regular expression:

Example: ((a | b)*c)*


Regular Expression To NFA
By means of the construction of Thompson, outline the NFA relevant to the following
regular expression:

Example: a (b | c)*d
Class Exercises

1. (aUb)*abc

2. (abUbc(abUc)*)*
Lecture References

A. Aho, R. Sethi and J. Ullman, Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools


(The Dragon Book), [ Second Edition]
References

1. A. Aho, R. Sethi and J. Ullman, Compilers: Principles, Techniques and


Tools(The Dragon Book), [ Second Edition]

2. Principles of Compiler Design (2nd Revised Edition 2009) A. A.


Puntambekar

3. Basics of Compiler Design Torben Mogensen

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