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<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD JATS (Z39.96) Journal Publishing DTD v1.0 20120330//EN" "JATS-journalpublishing1.dtd"><article xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" article-type="research-article"><front><journal-meta><journal-id journal-id-type="publisher-id">INFORMATICA</journal-id><journal-title-group><journal-title>Informatica</journal-title></journal-title-group><issn pub-type="epub">0868-4952</issn><issn pub-type="ppub">0868-4952</issn><publisher><publisher-name>VU</publisher-name></publisher></journal-meta><article-meta><article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">INF10103</article-id><article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.3233/INF-1999-10103</article-id><article-categories><subj-group subj-group-type="heading"><subject>Research article</subject></subj-group></article-categories><title-group><article-title>A Generalization of Regular Expressions</article-title></title-group><contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="Author"><name><surname>Gomozov</surname><given-names>Aleksei L.</given-names></name><xref ref-type="aff" rid="j_INFORMATICA_aff_000"/></contrib><contrib contrib-type="Author"><name><surname>Stanevichene</surname><given-names>Larisa I.</given-names></name><xref ref-type="aff" rid="j_INFORMATICA_aff_000"/></contrib><aff id="j_INFORMATICA_aff_000">Department of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia</aff></contrib-group><pub-date pub-type="epub"><day>01</day><month>01</month><year>1999</year></pub-date><volume>10</volume><issue>1</issue><fpage>27</fpage><lpage>44</lpage><history><date date-type="received"><day>01</day><month>01</month><year>1999</year></date></history><abstract><p>CF-expressions are defined which generalize the regular one. It is established that so called pseudo-coiterating CF-expressions characterize the regular sets. The results are used to develop some more characterizations of the regular sets: the pseudo-coiterating D-graphs and the pseudo-coiterating pushdown automata (PDAs). An algorithm is presented for deciding whether a device of three mentioned types is pseudo-coiterating or not. Apparently, the pseudo-coiterating PDAs form the most large of classes of PDAs the solvability of the question of belonging to which was proved and which are known as characterizations of the regular sets.</p></abstract><kwd-group><label>Keywords</label><kwd>D-graphs</kwd><kwd>regular expression generalization</kwd><kwd>characterization of context-free languages</kwd><kwd>pushdown automata</kwd><kwd>characterization of regular sets</kwd></kwd-group></article-meta></front></article>