Rule based Normalization of Regular Expression

Abstract

The regular expression is a specific pattern that provides the concise and flexible way to match strings of text. It is useful in the data validation, internet search engine, production of the syntax highlighting system, extract a substring from a string, etc. In this paper, the concept of un-normalized and normalized regular expression is discussed.  An un-normalized regular expression(r) can be converted into normalized regular expression (r') having the property lr'l < lrl. A methodology has been proposed for the conversion of an un-normalized regular expression to normalized regular expression. The proposed methodology has been implemented in the Java language.

Keywords: Methodology, regular expression, Java language