Title: Linear Parsing Expression Grammars,
Abstract: PEGs were formalized by Ford in 2004, and have several pragmatic operators
(such as ordered choice and unlimited lookahead) for better expressing modern
programming language syntax. Since these operators are not explicitly defined
in the classic formal language theory, it is significant and still challenging
to argue PEGs' expressiveness in the context of formal language theory.Since
PEGs are relatively new, there are several unsolved problems.One of the
problems is revealing a subclass of PEGs that is equivalent to DFAs. This
allows application of some techniques from the theory of regular grammar to
PEGs. In this paper, we define Linear PEGs (LPEGs), a subclass of PEGs that is
equivalent to DFAs. Surprisingly, LPEGs are formalized by only excluding some
patterns of recursive nonterminal in PEGs, and include the full set of ordered
choice, unlimited lookahead, and greedy repetition, which are characteristic of
PEGs. Although the conversion judgement of parsing expressions into DFAs is
undecidable in general, the formalism of LPEGs allows for a syntactical
judgement of parsing expressions.