research-article

A play on regular expressions: functional pearl

Authors:

Sebastian Fischer,

Frank Huch,

Thomas WilkeAuthors Info & Claims

ICFP '10: Proceedings of the 15th ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Functional programming

Pages 357 - 368

https://doi.org/10.1145/1863543.1863594

Published: 27 September 2010 Publication History

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Abstract

Cody, Hazel, and Theo, two experienced Haskell programmers and an expert in automata theory, develop an elegant Haskell program for matching regular expressions: (i) the program is purely functional; (ii) it is overloaded over arbitrary semirings, which not only allows to solve the ordinary matching problem but also supports other applications like computing leftmost longest matchings or the number of matchings, all with a single algorithm; (iii) it is more powerful than other matchers, as it can be used for parsing every context-free language by taking advantage of laziness.

The developed program is based on an old technique to turn regular expressions into finite automata which makes it efficient both in terms of worst-case time and space bounds and actual performance: despite its simplicity, the Haskell implementation can compete with a recently published professional C++ program for the same problem.

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Cited By

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Varatalu IVeanes MErnits J(2025)RE#: High Performance Derivative-Based Regex Matching with Intersection, Complement, and Restricted LookaroundsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/37048379:POPL(1-32)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1145/3704837
Chattopadhyay ALi AMamouras KStark KTimany ABlazy STabareau N(2025)Verified and Efficient Matching of Regular Expressions with LookaroundProceedings of the 14th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Certified Programs and Proofs10.1145/3703595.3705884(198-213)Online publication date: 10-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3703595.3705884
Zhuchko EVeanes MEbner GTimany ATraytel DPientka BBlazy S(2024)Lean Formalization of Extended Regular Expression Matching with LookaroundsProceedings of the 13th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Certified Programs and Proofs10.1145/3636501.3636959(118-131)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3636501.3636959
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Index Terms

A play on regular expressions: functional pearl
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language types
        Functional languages
2. Theory of computation
  1. Formal languages and automata theory

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Published In

ICFP '10: Proceedings of the 15th ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Functional programming

September 2010

398 pages

ISBN:9781605587943

DOI:10.1145/1863543

General Chair:
Paul Hudak
Yale University, USA
,
Program Chair:
Stephanie Weirich
University of Pennsylvania, USA

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 45, Issue 9
ICFP '10
September 2010
382 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/1932681
Issue’s Table of Contents

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Publication History

Published: 27 September 2010

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ICFP '10

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ICFP '10: ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming

September 27 - 29, 2010

Maryland, Baltimore, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 333 of 1,064 submissions, 31%

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October 12 - 18, 2025

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Varatalu IVeanes MErnits J(2025)RE#: High Performance Derivative-Based Regex Matching with Intersection, Complement, and Restricted LookaroundsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/37048379:POPL(1-32)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1145/3704837
Chattopadhyay ALi AMamouras KStark KTimany ABlazy STabareau N(2025)Verified and Efficient Matching of Regular Expressions with LookaroundProceedings of the 14th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Certified Programs and Proofs10.1145/3703595.3705884(198-213)Online publication date: 10-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3703595.3705884
Zhuchko EVeanes MEbner GTimany ATraytel DPientka BBlazy S(2024)Lean Formalization of Extended Regular Expression Matching with LookaroundsProceedings of the 13th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Certified Programs and Proofs10.1145/3636501.3636959(118-131)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3636501.3636959
Rodrigues NSebe MChen XRoşu G(2024)A Logical Treatment of Finite AutomataTools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems10.1007/978-3-031-57246-3_20(350-369)Online publication date: 4-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-57246-3_20
Moseley DNishio MPerez Rodriguez JSaarikivi OToub SVeanes MWan TXu E(2023)Derivative Based Nonbacktracking Real-World Regex Matching with Backtracking SemanticsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/35912627:PLDI(1026-1049)Online publication date: 6-Jun-2023
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Turoňová LHolík LLengál OSaarikivi OVeanes MVojnar T(2020)Regex matching with counting-set automataProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34282864:OOPSLA(1-30)Online publication date: 13-Nov-2020
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Radanne GThiemann P(2020)Regenerate: a language generator for extended regular expressionsACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/3393934.327813353:9(202-214)Online publication date: 7-Apr-2020
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Radanne GHermenegildo MIgarashi A(2019)Typed parsing and unparsing for untyped regular expression enginesProceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Partial Evaluation and Program Manipulation10.1145/3294032.3294082(35-46)Online publication date: 14-Jan-2019
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Radanne GThiemann PVan Wyk ERompf T(2018)Regenerate: a language generator for extended regular expressionsProceedings of the 17th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Generative Programming: Concepts and Experiences10.1145/3278122.3278133(202-214)Online publication date: 5-Nov-2018
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Stampoulis AChlipala A(2018)Prototyping a functional language using higher-order logic programming: a functional pearl on learning the ways of λProlog/MakamProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/32367882:ICFP(1-30)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2018
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