Article 6CSD4 Find the number of lookahead characters, needed by Lex for given DFA, for scanning input.

Find the number of lookahead characters, needed by Lex for given DFA, for scanning input.

by
ajiten
from LinuxQuestions.org on (#6CSD4)
This problem is taken from the book titled: Modern compiler implementation in C, by Appel; from page #38, problem #2.8.
https://www.google.co.in/books/editi...sec=frontcover

If the below DFA were used by Lex, to find tokens in a file; then:
a) How many characters past the end of a token might Lex have to examine before matching token.
b) Assume your answer to the part (a) is: k, show an input file containing at least two tokens, such that the first call to Lex will examine k characters past the end of the first token, before returning to the first token.
If answer to the part (a), i.e. k =0, then show an input file containing at least two tokens, and indicate the endpoint of each token.

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Seems this DFA can recognize the following language (set of strings):
+ U - U [a-z]+[0-9]* U [0-9]+({+|-}[0-9]+ U [0-9]+)

But, cannot understand how to find any answer to part (a); and hence clueless about part (b).

P.S.: Here, in the language: +, stands for: at least occurring one time.
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