Analyzing catastrophic backtracking behavior in practical regular expression matching

• We consider in some detail how regular expression matching happens in Java, as a popular representative of the category of regex-directed matching engines. We extract a slightly idealized algorithm for this scenario. Next we define an automata model which captures all the aspects needed to perform matching, of the Java style, in a formal way. Finally, two types of static analysis, which take a regular expression and tells whether there exists a family of strings which make Java-style matching run in exponential time, are done.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Datavetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Computer Sciences (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

regular expressions

catastrophic backtracking

static analysis

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)