REGULAR

EXPRESSION
AND FINITE
STATE
AUTOMATA
REGULAR EXPRESSION
 A regular expression is a sequence of characters that specifies a match
pattern in text. When comparing this pattern against a string, it'll either be
true or false.
 Example:-

(a  b c) *
describes the language

a, bc*  , a, bc, aa, abc, bca,...

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WHY REGULAR
EXPRESSION?
 Regular expressions allow matching and manipulation of textual data.
 Regular expressions is a language for specifying text search strings. The
regular expression languages used for text searches in Word document &
online Web searches are very similar.
Requirements:-
 Matching/Finding
 Doing something with matched text
 Validation of data
 Case insensitive matching
 Parsing data ( ex: html )
 Converting data into different form etc.

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STRINGS AND LANGUAGES
 A string is a data type used in programming, such as an integer and floating
point unit, but is used to represent text rather than numbers.
 It is comprised of a set of characters that can also contain spaces and
numbers. For example, the word “hamburger”. Even "12345" could be
considered a string, if specified correctly.
 Two important examples of programming language alphabets are ASCII and
EBCDIC character sets.

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STRINGS (CONT.)
 A string is a finite sequence of symbols such as 001. The length of a string
x, usually denoted |x|, is the total number of symbols in x.
 For e.g.: 110001 is a string of length 6. A special string is a empty string
which is denoted by ε. This string is of length 0(zero).
 If x and y are strings, then the concatenation of x and y, written as x.y or
just xy, is the string formed by following the symbols of x by the symbols of
y.
 For eg.:abd.ce = abdce i.e. if x= abd & y=ce , then xy = abdce.

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THINGS TO REMEMBER
Languages
Generated by
Regular Expressions  Regular
Languages

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EXAMPLE
 Regular expression

r a  b * a  bb 

Lr  a, bb, aa, abb, ba, bbb,...

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EXAMPLE
 Regular expression

r (0  1) * 00 (0  1) *

L(r )= { all strings containing substring 00 }

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REGULAR EXPRESSION &
FINITE STATE AUTOMATA
 Finite State Automata (FSA)
 Describing patterns with graphs
 Programs that keep track of state
 Regular Expressions (RE)
 Describing patterns with regular expressions
 Converting regular expressions to programs

The languages (Regular Languages) recognized by FSA and

 Note:-
generated by RE are the same.

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REGULAR EXPRESSIONS
 Describe (generate) Regular Languages
 A pattern:
 ε – the empty string
 a – a literal character, stands for itself

 Operations
 Concatenation, RS
 Alternation, R|S
 Closure (Kleene Star) – R*, the set of all strings that can be made by
concatenating zero or more strings in R

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REGULAR EXPRESSIONS
 There are three operators used to build regular expressions:
 Union
 R|S – L(R|S) = L(R)  L(S)
 Concatenation
 RS – L(RS) = {rs, r  R and s  S}
 Closure
 R* – L(R*) = {,R,RR,RRR,…}

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RE – EXAMPLES
 a|b* denotes

:- {ε, a, b, bb, bbb, ...}

 (a|b)* denotes

:- the set of all strings consisting of any number of a or b symbols, including

the empty string
 ab*(c|ε) denotes

:- the set of strings starting with a, then zero or more b’s and finally
optionally a c.

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REGULAR EXPRESSIONS
 a|(ab)
 (a|(ab))|(c|(bc))
 a*
 a*b*
 (ab)*
 a|bc*d
 letter = a|b|c|…|z|A|B|C|…|Z|_
 digit = 0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9
 letter(letter|digit)*
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FINITE STATE MACHINE
 Accepts or rejects a string
 A finite collection of states
 Has a single start state
 Transition from one state to another on a given input
 Machine accepts if in an accepting state at end of input (whatever that
means)
 The language accepted by a finite automata is the set of input strings that
end up in accepting states

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A SIMPLE AUTOMATON
0 1

1 0

q1 q2 q3

start 0,1

accept

on input “0110”, the machine goes:

q1  q1  q2  q2  q3 = “reject”
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A SIMPLE AUTOMATON
0 1

1 0

q1 q2 q3

0,1

on input “101”, the machine goes:

q1  q2  q3  q2 = “accept”
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STANDARD REPRESENTATIONS
OF REGULAR LANGUAGES
Regular Languages

DFAs

Regular
NFAs Expressions

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NON-DETERMINISTIC FINITE AUTOMATA
 A nondeterministic finite automaton (NFA) M is defined by a 5-
tuple M=(Q,,,q0,F), with

 Q: finite set of states

 : finite alphabet
 : transition function :QP (Q) P Power Set
 q0Q: start state
 FQ: set of accepting states

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A NONDETERMINISTIC
AUTOMATON
0,1 0,1

1 0,  1

q1 q2 q3 q4

This automaton accepts “0110”, because

there is a possible path that leads to an
accepting state, namely:
q1  q1  q2  q3  q4  q4
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DETERMINISTIC FINITE AUTOMATA
 Theoreticians have developed a number of theoretical models to describe
computing.
 Simplest model is known as DFA.
 Deterministic in the sense that machine will be in a state. Upon receipt of
a certain symbol, it will go to a known state.
 Finite as the machines only have a certain number of states.
 Automata refers to machine/robot.

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DETERMINISTIC FINITE AUTOMATA
 DFA’s recognize strings.
 If the input ends and the DFA is in an accept state, then the string is
recognized.
 A language can be described as a set of strings.
 A language is called a regular language if some finite automaton
recognizes it.
 A deterministic finite automaton (DFA) M is defined by a 5-tuple
M=(Q,,,q0,F)

 Q: finite set of states

 : finite alphabet
 : transition function :QQ
 q Q: start state
0
 FQ: set of accepting states

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DETERMINISTIC FINITE
AUTOMATA
0 1
M = (Q,,,q,F)

1 0

states Q = {q1,q2,q3}
q1 q2 q3
alphabet  = {0,1}
start state q1
accept states F={q2}
0,1
transition function :

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DETERMINISTIC FINITE AUTOMATA EXAMPLE

 Accept all strings that ends with a 1

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DETERMINISTIC FINITE AUTOMATA EXAMPLE

 Strings with an odd number of 1’s

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WHY STUDY REGULAR EXPRESSION AND DFA

 Test if a string matches some pattern.

 Scan for virus signatures.
 Process natural language.
 Search for information using Google.
 Search for markers in human genome.
 Access information in digital libraries.
 Search and replace in a word processor.
 Filter text

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 REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN NATURAL LANGUAGE
PROCESSING
Regular expressions or RegEx is a sequence of characters mainly used to find or
replace patterns embedded in the text.
Let’s consider this example: Suppose we have a list of friends-

And if we want to select only those names on this list which match the certain
pattern such as something the like this-

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 REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN NATURAL LANGUAGE
PROCESSING
 The names having the first two letters- S and U, followed by only three
positions that can be taken up by any letter.
 What do you think, which names fit this criterion? Let’s go one by one, the
name Sunil and Sumit fit this criterion as they have S and U in the
beginning and three more letters after that.
 While rest of the three names are not following the given criteria as Ankit
is starting with the alphabet A whereas Surjeet and Surabhi have more
than three characters post S and U.

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 REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN NATURAL LANGUAGE
PROCESSING
 What we have done here is that we have a pattern(or criteria) and a list of
names and we’re trying to find the name that matches the given pattern.
That’s exactly how regular expressions work.

 In RegEx, we’ve different types of patterns to recognize different strings of

characters

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FINITE STATE MACHINES (DFA) IN NLP TOKEN RECOGNITION

 State machine that recognizes the strings “he”,”hers”,”his”,”she”.

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SUMMARY
 DFA’s, NFA’s all accept exactly the same set of languages: the regular
languages.
 The NFA types are easier to design and may have exponentially fewer
states than a DFA.
 But only a DFA can be implemented!

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