Tools for modelling compilers I'm a wannabe mathematician, whose master's thesis is (by the looks of it) going to focus on a certain "compiler", used to produce learning materials from a subset of $\LaTeX$, in the context of mathematics education. I'm of course going to have to talk about the compilation process in general, and was planning to discuss the mathematical abstractions related to it (this being a master's thesis in mathematics), and then use those to describe the compiler.

I have no experience in the field whatsoever, however, and was wondering whether the concepts of regular expressions and languages, automata and the like are actually used to model (and|or) describe the functionality of compilers in a professional setting. Is it typical (even in the industry) to use these methods of modelling compilers, or are there better alternatives available?

I simply stumbled upon these basic concepts in a certain course handout, and they seem useful, but I want to be certain.
Be careful. Even mastering the tools for compiler construction, handling a very complex preexisting language (which LaTeX certainly is) is an arduous task. Add that there is no firm syntax for LaTeX (there are certain overall conventions, but lots of special cases) makes it worse.

But to really be of any guidance, we'd need a whole lot further detail: What kind of documents? Can you define the format, or is it a corpus of preexisting texts? Do they use the same packages? Are they written to some rigid format or "anything goes? What do you want to extract? (If it is e.g. all the "exercise" environments it is very simple ---but the contents will depend on all sorts of external definitions, finding/including that isn't simple. Solution is to require manual fixups, but that negates the "automation" aspect).

Go also to TeX.SE for LaTeX related questions.

Good luck!