The aim of this paper is to design a theoretical framework that allows us to perform the computation of regular expression derivatives through a space of generic structures. Thanks to this formalism, the main properties of regular expression derivation, such as the finiteness of the set of derivatives, need only be stated and proved one time, at the top level. Moreover, it is shown how to construct an alternating automaton associated with the derivation of a regular expression in this general framework. Finally, Brzozowski’s derivation and Antimirov’s derivation turn out to be a particular case of this general scheme and it is shown how to construct a DFA, a NFA and an AFA for both of these derivations.

Since recognizable tree languages are closed under the rational operations, every regular tree expression denotes a recognizable tree language. We provide an alternative proof to this fact that results in smaller tree automata. To this aim, we transfer Antimirov's partial derivatives from regular word expressions to regular tree expressions. For an analysis of the size of the resulting automaton as well as for algorithmic improvements, we also transfer the methods of Champarnaud and Ziadi from words to trees.

The standard procedure to transform a regular expression of size n to an ϵ-free nondeterministic finite automaton yields automata with O(n) states and O(n2) transitions. For a long time this was supposed to be also the lower bound, but a result by Hromkovic et al. showed how to build an ϵ-free NFA with only O(n log2(n)) transitions. The current lower bound on the number of transitions is Ω(n log(n)). A rough running time estimation for the common follow sets (CFS) construction proposed by Hromkovič et al. yields a cubic algorithm. In this paper we present a sequential algorithm for the CFS construction which works in time O(n log(n) + size of the output). On a CREW PRAM the CFS construction can be performed in time O(log(n)) using O(n + (size of the output)/log(n)) processors. We also present a simpler proof of the lower bound on the number of transitions.

An alternative (tree-based) semantics for a class of regular expressions is proposed that assigns a central rôle to the + operator and thus to nondeterminism and nondeterministic choice. For the new semantics a consistent and complete axiomatization is obtained from the original axiomatization of regular expressions by Salomaa and by Kozen by dropping the idempotence law for + and the distribution law of • over +.