Alternation (formal language theory)
Appearance
In formal language theory and pattern matching, alternation is the union of two sets of strings or patterns.
In some programming languages, string concatenation is a binary infix operator, often notated "|". As a pattern, the alternation a|b
matches either a
or b
.
References
- John E. Hopcroft and Jeffrey D. Ullman, Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages and Computation, Addison-Wesley Publishing, Reading Massachusetts, 1979. ISBN 0-201-02988-X.