NDLI: Synthesizing regular expressions from examples for introductory automata assignments

Content Provider	ACM Digital Library
Author	So, Sunbeom Oh, Hakjoo Lee, Mina
Abstract	We present a method for synthesizing regular expressions for introductory automata assignments. Given a set of positive and negative examples, the method automatically synthesizes the simplest possible regular expression that accepts all the positive examples while rejecting all the negative examples. The key novelty is the search-based synthesis algorithm that leverages ideas from over- and under-approximations to effectively prune out a large search space. We have implemented our technique in a tool and evaluated it with non-trivial benchmark problems that students often struggle with. The results show that our system can synthesize desired regular expressions in 6.7 seconds on the average, so that it can be interactively used by students to enhance their understanding of regular expressions.
Starting Page	70
Ending Page	80
Page Count	11
File Format	PDF
ISSN	03621340 15581160
DOI	10.1145/3093335.2993244
Journal	ACM SIGPLAN Notices (SIGP)
Volume Number	52
Issue Number	3
Language	English
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Publisher Date	1983-05-01
Publisher Place	New York
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Regular expression Programming by example Program synthesis
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design Software

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Synthesizing regular expressions from examples for introductory automata assignments