Patent ID: 7010476

Claim:
A method for producing finite-state networks, comprising: producing an input finite-state network having a set of paths, with at least one of the paths in the set of paths containing a delimited subpath; the delimited subpath encoding on an indicated side a delimited substring formatted as a regular expression; creating a first temporary finite-state network by extracting from the first finite-state network the delimited subpath and eliminating symbols on the indicated side of the delimited subpath; creating a second temporary finite-state network by compiling the delimited substring formatted as a regular expression; computing the cross-product of the first temporary finite-state network and the second temporary finite-state network to create a resulting finite-state network that is a compiled representation of the delimited substring; producing an output finite-state network by replacing the delimited subpath in the input finite-state network with the resulting finite-state network; and performing language processing using the output finite-state network.