[Solved]: What is meant by "give pattern of a regular expression"

Problem Detail: 

I have an alphabet $A = \{b,B\}$ and I'm asked to write down the pattern of the regular expression $(\epsilon|bb|b)(B|bb)(b|\epsilon|b)$. What does the question actually want me to do? I'm not sure. Does it want me to give the possible patterns that can be formed with $b$ and $B$? But then surely the question would not have been phrased the way it is.

I'm just confused about what I need to do here and what is expected of the answer. If anyone could give an example it would be very helpful.

Note: This is not the original question, I changed and simplified it.

Asked By : user1070241

Answered By : saadtaame

A pattern (in the context of languages and automata) is a way of defining a set of strings. A string matches a pattern if it belongs in the set defined by that pattern. So, your regular expression is actually a pattern. The question, I think, would be to find the pattern given a set of strings!

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Question Source : http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/9132

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