10,016 research outputs found
Efficient Testing and Matching of Deterministic Regular Expressions
International audienc
Regular Expression Matching and Operational Semantics
Many programming languages and tools, ranging from grep to the Java String
library, contain regular expression matchers. Rather than first translating a
regular expression into a deterministic finite automaton, such implementations
typically match the regular expression on the fly. Thus they can be seen as
virtual machines interpreting the regular expression much as if it were a
program with some non-deterministic constructs such as the Kleene star. We
formalize this implementation technique for regular expression matching using
operational semantics. Specifically, we derive a series of abstract machines,
moving from the abstract definition of matching to increasingly realistic
machines. First a continuation is added to the operational semantics to
describe what remains to be matched after the current expression. Next, we
represent the expression as a data structure using pointers, which enables
redundant searches to be eliminated via testing for pointer equality. From
there, we arrive both at Thompson's lockstep construction and a machine that
performs some operations in parallel, suitable for implementation on a large
number of cores, such as a GPU. We formalize the parallel machine using process
algebra and report some preliminary experiments with an implementation on a
graphics processor using CUDA.Comment: In Proceedings SOS 2011, arXiv:1108.279
Which Regular Expression Patterns are Hard to Match?
Regular expressions constitute a fundamental notion in formal language theory
and are frequently used in computer science to define search patterns. A
classic algorithm for these problems constructs and simulates a
non-deterministic finite automaton corresponding to the expression, resulting
in an running time (where is the length of the pattern and is
the length of the text). This running time can be improved slightly (by a
polylogarithmic factor), but no significantly faster solutions are known. At
the same time, much faster algorithms exist for various special cases of
regular expressions, including dictionary matching, wildcard matching, subset
matching, word break problem etc.
In this paper, we show that the complexity of regular expression matching can
be characterized based on its {\em depth} (when interpreted as a formula). Our
results hold for expressions involving concatenation, OR, Kleene star and
Kleene plus. For regular expressions of depth two (involving any combination of
the above operators), we show the following dichotomy: matching and membership
testing can be solved in near-linear time, except for "concatenations of
stars", which cannot be solved in strongly sub-quadratic time assuming the
Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH). For regular expressions of depth
three the picture is more complex. Nevertheless, we show that all problems can
either be solved in strongly sub-quadratic time, or cannot be solved in
strongly sub-quadratic time assuming SETH.
An intriguing special case of membership testing involves regular expressions
of the form "a star of an OR of concatenations", e.g., . This
corresponds to the so-called {\em word break} problem, for which a dynamic
programming algorithm with a runtime of (roughly) is known. We
show that the latter bound is not tight and improve the runtime to
Pattern matching in compilers
In this thesis we develop tools for effective and flexible pattern matching.
We introduce a new pattern matching system called amethyst. Amethyst is not
only a generator of parsers of programming languages, but can also serve as an
alternative to tools for matching regular expressions.
Our framework also produces dynamic parsers. Its intended use is in the
context of IDE (accurate syntax highlighting and error detection on the fly).
Amethyst offers pattern matching of general data structures. This makes it a
useful tool for implementing compiler optimizations such as constant folding,
instruction scheduling, and dataflow analysis in general.
The parsers produced are essentially top-down parsers. Linear time complexity
is obtained by introducing the novel notion of structured grammars and
regularized regular expressions. Amethyst uses techniques known from compiler
optimizations to produce effective parsers.Comment: master thesi
Answering Regular Path Queries on Workflow Provenance
This paper proposes a novel approach for efficiently evaluating regular path
queries over provenance graphs of workflows that may include recursion. The
approach assumes that an execution g of a workflow G is labeled with
query-agnostic reachability labels using an existing technique. At query time,
given g, G and a regular path query R, the approach decomposes R into a set of
subqueries R1, ..., Rk that are safe for G. For each safe subquery Ri, G is
rewritten so that, using the reachability labels of nodes in g, whether or not
there is a path which matches Ri between two nodes can be decided in constant
time. The results of each safe subquery are then composed, possibly with some
small unsafe remainder, to produce an answer to R. The approach results in an
algorithm that significantly reduces the number of subqueries k over existing
techniques by increasing their size and complexity, and that evaluates each
subquery in time bounded by its input and output size. Experimental results
demonstrate the benefit of this approach
Combining Static and Dynamic Contract Checking for Curry
Static type systems are usually not sufficient to express all requirements on
function calls. Hence, contracts with pre- and postconditions can be used to
express more complex constraints on operations. Contracts can be checked at run
time to ensure that operations are only invoked with reasonable arguments and
return intended results. Although such dynamic contract checking provides more
reliable program execution, it requires execution time and could lead to
program crashes that might be detected with more advanced methods at compile
time. To improve this situation for declarative languages, we present an
approach to combine static and dynamic contract checking for the functional
logic language Curry. Based on a formal model of contract checking for
functional logic programming, we propose an automatic method to verify
contracts at compile time. If a contract is successfully verified, dynamic
checking of it can be omitted. This method decreases execution time without
degrading reliable program execution. In the best case, when all contracts are
statically verified, it provides trust in the software since crashes due to
contract violations cannot occur during program execution.Comment: Pre-proceedings paper presented at the 27th International Symposium
on Logic-Based Program Synthesis and Transformation (LOPSTR 2017), Namur,
Belgium, 10-12 October 2017 (arXiv:1708.07854
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