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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ITP.2025.16

Finiteness of Symbolic Derivatives in Lean

Authors: Ekaterina Zhuchko, Hendrik Maarand, Margus Veanes, and Gabriel Ebner

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 352, 16th International Conference on Interactive Theorem Proving (ITP 2025)

Abstract

Brzozowski proved that the set of derivatives of any regular expression is finite modulo associativity, idempotence and, notably, commutativity of the union operator. We extend this result to the case of symbolic location based derivatives, for which we prove finiteness of the state space by quotienting only by associativity, deduplication and idempotence (ADI); the fact that we don't use commutativity allows for this result to carry over to the derivative based backtracking (PCRE) match semantics, where the union operator is noncommutative. Furthermore, we consider regular expressions extended with lookarounds, intersection, and negation. We also show that our method for proving finiteness allows us to include certain simplification rules in the derivative operation while preserving finiteness. The finiteness proof is constructive: given an expression R, we construct a finite set that is an overapproximation (modulo ADI) of the set of derivatives of R. We reuse some of the infrastructure provided in previous formalization efforts for regular expressions in Lean 4, showing the flexibility and reusability of the framework.

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Ekaterina Zhuchko, Hendrik Maarand, Margus Veanes, and Gabriel Ebner. Finiteness of Symbolic Derivatives in Lean. In 16th International Conference on Interactive Theorem Proving (ITP 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 352, pp. 16:1-16:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{zhuchko_et_al:LIPIcs.ITP.2025.16,
  author =	{Zhuchko, Ekaterina and Maarand, Hendrik and Veanes, Margus and Ebner, Gabriel},
  title =	{{Finiteness of Symbolic Derivatives in Lean}},
  booktitle =	{16th International Conference on Interactive Theorem Proving (ITP 2025)},
  pages =	{16:1--16:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-396-6},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{352},
  editor =	{Forster, Yannick and Keller, Chantal},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITP.2025.16},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-246144},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITP.2025.16},
  annote =	{Keywords: Lean, regular languages, lookarounds, derivatives, finiteness}
}

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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2019.40

Reordering Derivatives of Trace Closures of Regular Languages

Authors: Hendrik Maarand and Tarmo Uustalu

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 140, 30th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2019)

Abstract

We provide syntactic derivative-like operations, defined by recursion on regular expressions, in the styles of both Brzozowski and Antimirov, for trace closures of regular languages. Just as the Brzozowski and Antimirov derivative operations for regular languages, these syntactic reordering derivative operations yield deterministic and nondeterministic automata respectively. But trace closures of regular languages are in general not regular, hence these automata cannot generally be finite. Still, as we show, for star-connected expressions, the Antimirov and Brzozowski automata, suitably quotiented, are finite. We also define a refined version of the Antimirov reordering derivative operation where parts-of-derivatives (states of the automaton) are nonempty lists of regular expressions rather than single regular expressions. We define the uniform scattering rank of a language and show that, for a regexp whose language has finite uniform scattering rank, the truncation of the (generally infinite) refined Antimirov automaton, obtained by removing long states, is finite without any quotienting, but still accepts the trace closure. We also show that star-connected languages have finite uniform scattering rank.

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Hendrik Maarand and Tarmo Uustalu. Reordering Derivatives of Trace Closures of Regular Languages. In 30th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2019). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 140, pp. 40:1-40:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2019)

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@InProceedings{maarand_et_al:LIPIcs.CONCUR.2019.40,
  author =	{Maarand, Hendrik and Uustalu, Tarmo},
  title =	{{Reordering Derivatives of Trace Closures of Regular Languages}},
  booktitle =	{30th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2019)},
  pages =	{40:1--40:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-121-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2019},
  volume =	{140},
  editor =	{Fokkink, Wan and van Glabbeek, Rob},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2019.40},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-109426},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2019.40},
  annote =	{Keywords: Mazurkiewicz traces, trace closure, regular languages, finite automata, language derivatives, scattering rank, star-connected expressions}
}

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Documents authored by Maarand, Hendrik

Finiteness of Symbolic Derivatives in Lean

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Reordering Derivatives of Trace Closures of Regular Languages

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