A Design Recipe and Recipe-Based Errors for Regular Expressions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a structured design recipe and error messaging system to assist students in developing regular expressions, emphasizing clarity, guidance, and effective debugging support.

Contribution

It presents a novel framework combining a design recipe with recipe-based error messages and a shorthand syntax for unit tests, enhancing learning and debugging of regular expressions.

Findings

Improved student understanding of regular expression design.

Effective debugging sessions using the proposed system.

Concise, jargon-free error messages facilitate learning.

Abstract

This article presents a novel framework to provide Formal Languages and Automata Theory students design support for the development of regular expressions. This framework includes a design recipe for regular expressions and a customized error messaging system. The error messaging system produces recipe-based errors that include the step of the design recipe not successfully completed. Furthermore, the error messages follow the established practices of being concise, succinct, jargon-free, and nonprescriptive. In addition, a shorthand syntax developed for writing unit tests is described. The in-class use of the design recipe is illustrated, two debugging sessions using the described system are discussed, and the implementation of the error messaging system is briefly sketched.