A Regular Matching Constraint for String Variables

Abstract

Using a regular language as a pattern for string matching is nowadays a common -and sometimes unsafe- operation, provided as a built-in feature by most programming languages. A proper constraint solver over string variables should support most of the operations over regular expressions and related constructs. However, state-of-the-art string solvers natively support only the membership relation of a string variable to a regular language. Here we take a step forward by defining a specialised propagator for the match operation, returning the leftmost position where a pattern can match a given string. Empirical evidences show the effectiveness of our approach, implemented within the constraint programming framework, and tested against state-of-the-art string solvers.

Cite

Text

Amadini and Stuckey. "A Regular Matching Constraint for String Variables." International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2023. doi:10.24963/IJCAI.2023/207

Markdown

[Amadini and Stuckey. "A Regular Matching Constraint for String Variables." International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2023.](https://mlanthology.org/ijcai/2023/amadini2023ijcai-regular/) doi:10.24963/IJCAI.2023/207

BibTeX

@inproceedings{amadini2023ijcai-regular,
  title     = {{A Regular Matching Constraint for String Variables}},
  author    = {Amadini, Roberto and Stuckey, Peter J.},
  booktitle = {International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence},
  year      = {2023},
  pages     = {1868-1875},
  doi       = {10.24963/IJCAI.2023/207},
  url       = {https://mlanthology.org/ijcai/2023/amadini2023ijcai-regular/}
}