Producing all possible matches of a regular expression

Question

Given a regular expression, I want to produce the set of strings that that regular expression would match. It is important to note that this set would not be infinite becau

Answer 1

Are there any well known algorithms in place to do this?

In the Perl world we have a module on CPAN that does just that -> Regexp::Genex

A recursive algorithm is described here , several libraries that do this in Java are mentioned here.

Are there any research papers I could read to gain insight into this problem?

Yes, the following papers are available for counting the strings that would match a regex (or obtaining generating functions for them):

1. Counting occurrences for a finite set of words: an inclusion-exclusion approach by F. Bassino, J. Clement2, J. Fayolle, and P. Nicodeme (2007) paper slides
2. Regexpcount, a symbolic package for counting problems on regular expressions and words by Pierre Nicodeme (2003) paper link link code