Introducing some theory
Every regular expression is compiled into a recognizer by building a generalized transition diagram called a finite automaton. A finite automaton can be either deterministic or nondeterministic. Nondeterministic means that more than one transition out of a state can be possible for the same input. A recognizer is a program that takes a string x as input and is able to tell whether x is a sentence of a given language.
A grammar is a set of production rules for strings in a formal language. The production rules describe how to create strings from the alphabet of the language that are valid according to the syntax of the language. A grammar does not describe the meaning of a string or what can be done with it in whatever ...
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