Lexical Analysis

Question 1

What does lexical analysis do?

Answer 1

Reads characters and produces sequences of tokens

Question 2

How are lexical analysers automatically generated from regular expressions?

Answer 2

1. Construct RE
2. Convert RE to NFA
3. Build DFA from NFA
4. Minimise DFA
5. Convert DFA to Transition Table

Question 3

What kind of Language can a Regular Expression describe?

Answer 3

A Regular Language

Question 4

How might we represent a DFA in memory?

Answer 4

Using a Transition Table

This contains all the states and their transitions