Regular expression puzzle

Question

This is not homework, but an old exam question. I am curious to see the answer.

We are given an alphabet S={0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,+}. Define the language L as the set of strings w from this alphabet such that w is in L if:

a) w is a number such as 42 or w is the (finite) sum of numbers such as 34 + 16 or 34 + 2 + 10

and

b) The number represented by w is divisible by 3.

Write a regular expression (and a DFA) for L.

Answer 1

This should work:

^(?:0|(?:(?:[369]|[147](?:0*(?:\+?(?:0\+)*[369]0*)*\+?(?:0\+)*[147]0*(?:\+?(?:0\
+)*[369]0*)*\+?(?:0\+)*[258])*(?:0*(?:\+?(?:0\+)*[369]0*)*\+?(?:0\+)*[258]|0*(?:
\+?(?:0\+)*[369]0*)*\+?(?:0\+)*[147]0*(?:\+?(?:0\+)*[369]0*)*\+?(?:0\+)*[147])|[
258](?:0*(?:\+?(?:0\+)*[369]0*)*\+?(?:0\+)*[258]0*(?:\+?(?:0\+)*[369]0*)*\+?(?:0
\+)*[147])*(?:0*(?:\+?(?:0\+)*[369]0*)*\+?(?:0\+)*[147]|0*(?:\+?(?:0\+)*[369]0*)
*\+?(?:0\+)*[258]0*(?:\+?(?:0\+)*[369]0*)*\+?(?:0\+)*[258]))0*)+)(?:\+(?:0|(?:(?
:[369]|[147](?:0*(?:\+?(?:0\+)*[369]0*)*\+?(?:0\+)*[147]0*(?:\+?(?:0\+)*[369]0*)
*\+?(?:0\+)*[258])*(?:0*(?:\+?(?:0\+)*[369]0*)*\+?(?:0\+)*[258]|0*(?:\+?(?:0\+)*
[369]0*)*\+?(?:0\+)*[147]0*(?:\+?(?:0\+)*[369]0*)*\+?(?:0\+)*[147])|[258](?:0*(?
:\+?(?:0\+)*[369]0*)*\+?(?:0\+)*[258]0*(?:\+?(?:0\+)*[369]0*)*\+?(?:0\+)*[147])*
(?:0*(?:\+?(?:0\+)*[369]0*)*\+?(?:0\+)*[147]|0*(?:\+?(?:0\+)*[369]0*)*\+?(?:0\+)
*[258]0*(?:\+?(?:0\+)*[369]0*)*\+?(?:0\+)*[258]))0*)+))*$

It works by having three states representing the sum of the digits so far modulo 3. It disallows leading zeros on numbers, and plus signs at the start and end of the string, as well as two consecutive plus signs.

Generation of regular expression and test bed:

a = r'0*(?:\+?(?:0\+)*[369]0*)*\+?(?:0\+)*'
b = r'a[147]'
c = r'a[258]'

r1 = '[369]|[147](?:bc)*(?:c|bb)|[258](?:cb)*(?:b|cc)'
r2 = '(?:0|(?:(?:' + r1 + ')0*)+)'
r3 = '^' + r2 + r'(?:\+' + r2 + ')*$'
r = r3.replace('b', b).replace('c', c).replace('a', a)

print r

# Test on 10000 examples.

import random, re
random.seed(1)
r = re.compile(r)
for _ in range(10000):
    x = ''.join(random.choice('0123456789+') for j in range(random.randint(1,50)))
    if re.search(r'(?:\+|^)(?:\+|0[0-9])|\+$', x):
        valid = False
    else:
        valid = eval(x) % 3 == 0
    result = re.match(r, x) is not None
    if result != valid:
        print 'Failed for ' + x