Patent Document ID: 8725749
Application ID: 13556684

Base Claim:
1. A method for matching regular expressions including word boundary symbols, the method comprising: receiving an input string; receiving a regular expression including a word or non-word boundary symbol; transforming, by a processor, the regular expression into an automaton such that a set of strings accepted by the automaton is the same as a set of strings described by the regular expression, wherein the automaton is a final automaton derived from a plurality of intermediate automata, and wherein transforming the regular expression into the final automaton further includes transforming the regular expression into a first intermediate automaton that accepts a string over an extended alphabet including word and non-word boundary symbols; and processing the input string by the automaton to determine if the input string matches the regular expression.

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Claim 2:
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein transforming the regular expression into a first intermediate automaton that accepts a string over an extended alphabet including word and non-word boundary symbols further comprises transforming the regular expression into the first intermediate automaton that accepts the string over the extended alphabet including word and non-word boundary symbols if and only if: the string over the extended alphabet is in a set of strings described by the regular expression over the extended alphabet, and the regular expression over the extended alphabet is syntactically identical to the regular expression excluding the word and non-word boundary symbols, but where the word and non-word boundary symbols are treated as ordinary alphabet symbols as opposed to being interpreted as the word and non-word boundary symbols.