Scribd
Upload
11 views35 pages

Regular Expressions and DFAs

Uploaded by

alibayhya7
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
11 views35 pages

Regular Expressions and DFAs

Uploaded by

alibayhya7
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 35

Regular Expressions

and DFAs
Regular Expression

• Notation to specify a set of strings


Examples
Exercise 1

• Let ∑ be a finite set of symbols


• ∑ = {10, 11}, ∑* = ?
Answer

• Answer: ∑* = {є, 10, 11, 1010, 1011, 1110,


• 1111, …}
Exercises 2

• Let ∑ be a finite set of symbols and let L, L1, and L2 be sets of strings
from ∑*. L1L2 is the set {xy | x is in L1, and y is in L2}
• L1 = {10, 1}, L2 = {011, 11}, L1L2 = ?
Answer

• L1L2 = {10011, 1011, 111}


Exercises 3

• Write RE for
• All strings of 0’s and 1’s
• All strings of 0’s and 1’s with at least 2
consecutive 0’s
• All strings of 0’s and 1’s beginning with 1 and not having two consecutive 0’s
Answer

• (0+1)*
All strings of 0’s and 1’s
• (0+1)*00(0+1)*
All strings of 0’s and 1’s with at least 2
consecutive 0’s
• (1+10)* (1+10)
All strings of 0’s and 1’s beginning with 1
and not having two consecutive 0’s
More Exercises

• 1) (0+1)*011
• 2) 0*1*2*
• 3) 00*11*22*
More Exercises (Answers)

1) (0+1)*011
Answer: all strings of 0’s and 1’s ending in 011
2) 0*1*2*
• Answer: any number of 0’s followed by
any number of 1’s followed by any number
of 2’s
• 3) 00*11*22*
Answer: strings in 0*1*2 with at least one of
each symbol
Using Regular Expressions

• Regular expressions are a standard programmer's tool.


• Built in to Java, Perl, Unix, Python, . . . .
Deterministic Finite Automata (DFA)

• Simple machine with N states.


• Begin in start state.
• Read first input symbol.
• Move to new state, depending on current state and input symbol.
• Repeat until last input symbol read.
• Accept or reject string depending on label of last state.
Theory of DFAs and REs

• RE. Concise way to describe a set of strings.


• DFA. Machine to recognize whether a given string is in a given set.
• Duality: for any DFA, there exists a regular expression to describe the
same set of strings; for any regular expression, there exists a DFA
that recognizes the same set.
Duality Example

• DFA for multiple of 3 b’s:

• RE for multiple of 3 b’s:


Fundamental Questions

• Which languages CANNOT be described by any RE?


Problem 1
• Make a DFA that accepts the strings in the language denoted by regular
expression ab*a
Solution

• ab*a:
Problem 2

• Write the RE for the following automata:

a
b
b
q0 a q2 q3

a
Solution

• a(a|b)*a

a
b
b
q0 a q2 q3

a
DFA to RE: State Elimination

• Eliminates states of the automaton and replaces the edges with


regular expressions that includes the behavior of the eliminated
states.
• Eventually we get down to the situation with just a start and final
node, and this is easy to express as a RE
State Elimination
• Consider the figure below, which shows a generic state s about to be
eliminated.
• The labels on all edges are regular expressions.
• To remove s, we must make labels from each qi to p1 up to pm that
include the paths we could have made through s.
DFA to RE via State Elimination (1)

• Starting with intermediate states and then moving to accepting


states, apply the state elimination process to produce an equivalent
automaton with regular expression labels on the edges.
• The result will be a one or two state automaton with a start state
and accepting state.
DFA to RE State Elimination (2)

• If the two states are different, we will have an automaton


that looks like the following:

• We can describe this automaton as: (R+SU*T)*SU*


DFA to RE State Elimination (3)

• If the start state is also an accepting state, then we must


also perform a state elimination from the original
automaton that gets rid of every state but the start state.
This leaves the following:

• We can describe this automaton as simply R*


DFA to RE State Elimination (4)

• If there are n accepting states, we must repeat the above steps for
each accepting states to get n different regular expressions, R1, R2, …
Rn.
• For each repeat we turn any other accepting state to non-accepting.
• The desired regular expression for the automaton is then the union
of each of the n regular expressions: R1 U R2… U RN
DFA->RE Example

• Convert the following to a RE:

• First convert the edges to RE’s:


DFA -> RE Example (2)

Eliminate State 1:

Note edge from 3->3

Answer: (0+10)*11(0+1)*
Second Example

• Automata that accepts


even number of 1’s

• Eliminate state 2:
Second Example (2)

Two accepting states, turn off state 3 first

This is just 0*; can ignore going to state 3 since we would


“die”
Second Example (3)

Turn off state 1 second:

This is just 0*10*1(0+10*1)*


Combine from previous slide to get 0* + 0*10*1(0+10*1)*
RE -> Automata

• We can do this easiest by converting a RE to an NFA


• Beyond the scope of this course…
Questions
DFA to R.E. by elimination: example

Resulting R.E.:
(0+1)*1(0+1)+
(0+1)*1(0+1)(0+1) or
(0+1)*1(0+1)(ϵ+0+1)
35

You might also like