rtd

Tool for generating a DFA for a given regular expression. It can either print the DFA's 5-tuple components, or output the DFA as a DOT file.

Steps:

• Convert the input regex from infix to postfix notation using the shunting yard algorithm.
• Convert the regex to a λ-NFA using Thompson's construction algorithm.
• Convert the λ-NFA to a DFA using the powerset construction algorithm.

Operators

• <s1>|<s2> - Matches either the subexpression <s1> or <s2>
• <s1><s2> - Matches the subexpression <s1> concatenated with <s2>
• <s>* - Matches zero or more occurrences of <s>
• <s>+ - Matches one or more occurrences of <s>
• <s>? - Matches zero or one occurance of <s>

Building

Dependencies:

• GCC release >= 10.1 or Clang release >= 16.0.0
• make
• graphviz
• pkg-config

On Debian-based systems, they can usually be installed as follows:

$ sudo apt install g++ make pkg-config libgraphviz-dev

To clone and build the program, run:

$ git clone https://github.com/niculaionut/rtd.git
$ cd rtd
$ make

Examples:

• Get usage info:

$ ./rtd -h
USAGE:
    rtd [FLAGS/OPTIONS] <regex>

FLAGS:
    -h
        Print help info.
    -a
        Set the alphabet of the regex as all alphanumericals.
    -e
        Export the graph in DOT language (by default, only the DFA components will be printed).

OPTIONS:
    -s <alphabet>
        Set the alphabet of the regex (only alphanumericals allowed).
    -o <output_file>
        Set the path at which the graph file will be written (default is stdout).

• Get the DFA components for (a|b)*abb:

$ ./rtd '(a|b)*abb'
STATES = {q0, q1, q2, q3, q4}
SIGMA = {a, b}
TRANSITIONS:
        δ(q0, a) = q1
        δ(q0, b) = q2
        δ(q1, a) = q1
        δ(q1, b) = q3
        δ(q2, a) = q1
        δ(q2, b) = q2
        δ(q3, a) = q1
        δ(q3, b) = q4
        δ(q4, a) = q1
        δ(q4, b) = q2
START STATE = q0
FINAL STATES = {q4}

• Get the visual DFA representation for (a|b)*abb:

$ ./rtd -e '(a|b)*abb' >graph.dot
$ dot -Tsvg graph.dot >graph.svg
$ firefox graph.svg

• Get the visual DFA representation for the expressions provided as tests:

$ make tests
$ firefox output/*

Resources

• 'Shunting yard' algorithm;
• Thompson's construction algorithm;
• Powerset construction algorithm;
• graphviz example.