A proof Procedure for Testing Membership in Regular Expressions

Abstract: We propose an algorithm that test membership for regular expressions and show that the algorithm is correct. This algorithm is written in the style of a sequent proof system. The advantage of this algorithm over traditional ones is that the complex conversion process from regular expressions to finite automata is not needed. As a consequence, our algorithm is simple and extends easily to various extensions to regular expressions such as timed regular expressions or regular languages with the intersection.