Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Analyzing Matching Time Behavior of Backtracking Regular Expression Matchers by Using Ambiguity of NFA

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Implementation and Application of Automata (CIAA 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 9705))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

We apply results from ambiguity of non-deterministic finite automata to the problem of determining the asymptotic worst-case matching time, as a function of the length of the input strings, when attempting to match input strings with a given regular expression, where the matcher being used is a backtracking regular expression matcher.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Regexlib. http://www.regxlib.com. Accessed 06 Oct 2015

  2. Regular expression static analysis project page. http://www.cs.sun.ac.za/~abvdm/regex.html. Accessed 30 Apr 2016

  3. Snort. http://www.snort.org. Accessed 06 Oct 2015

  4. Adam, B.: Regular expression dos and node.js (2014). https://blog.liftsecurity.io/2014/11/03/regular-expression-dos-and-node.js

  5. Allauzen, C., Mohri, M., Rastogi, A.: General algorithms for testing the ambiguity of finite automata. In: Ito, M., Toyama, M. (eds.) DLT 2008. LNCS, vol. 5257, pp. 108–120. Springer, Heidelberg (2008). http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85780-8_8

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  6. Berglund, M., Drewes, F., van der Merwe, B.: Analyzing catastrophic backtracking behavior in practical regular expression matching. In: Ésik, Z., Fülöp, Z. (eds.) Proceedings 14th International Conference on Automata and Formal Languages, AFL 2014, EPTCS, vol. 151, Szeged, Hungary, 27–29 May 2014, pp. 109–123 (2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.151.7

  7. Berglund, M., van der Merwe, B.: On the semantics of regular expression parsing in the wild. In: Drewes, F. (ed.) CIAA 2015. LNCS, vol. 9223, pp. 292–304. Springer, Heidelberg (2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22360-5_24

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Cox, R.: Implementing regular expressions (2007). http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/. Accessed 26 Feb 2016

  9. Gray, J., Harrison, M.A., Ibarra, O.H.: Two-way pushdown automata. Inf. Control 11(1/2), 30–70 (1967). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0019-9958(67)90369-5

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  10. Rathnayake, A., Thielecke, H.: Static analysis for regular expression exponential runtime via substructural logics. CoRR abs/1405.7058 (2014). http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.7058

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

    Nicolaas Weideman & Brink van der Merwe

  2. Department of Computer Science, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Martin Berglund

  3. FASTAR Research, Information Science, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

    Bruce Watson

  4. Center for AI Research, CSIR, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

    Nicolaas Weideman

Authors
  1. Nicolaas Weideman
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Brink van der Merwe
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Martin Berglund
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Bruce Watson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nicolaas Weideman .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

    Yo-Sub Han

  2. Queen's University , Kingston, Ontario, Canada

    Kai Salomaa

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this paper

Cite this paper

Weideman, N., van der Merwe, B., Berglund, M., Watson, B. (2016). Analyzing Matching Time Behavior of Backtracking Regular Expression Matchers by Using Ambiguity of NFA. In: Han, YS., Salomaa, K. (eds) Implementation and Application of Automata. CIAA 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9705. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40946-7_27

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40946-7_27

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-40945-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-40946-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation