+(*
+Pointed Regular expressions
+
+We now introduce pointed regular expressions, that are the main tool we shall
+use for the construction of the automaton.
+A pointed regular expression is just a regular expression internally labelled
+with some additional points. Intuitively, points mark the positions inside the
+regular expression which have been reached after reading some prefix of
+the input string, or better the positions where the processing of the remaining
+string has to be started. Each pointed expression for $e$ represents a state of
+the {\em deterministic} automaton associated with $e$; since we obviously have
+only a finite number of possible labellings, the number of states of the automaton
+is finite.
+
+Pointed regular expressions provide the tool for an algebraic revisitation of
+McNaughton and Yamada's algorithm for position automata, making the proof of its
+correctness, that is far from trivial, particularly clear and simple. In particular,
+pointed expressions offer an appealing alternative to Brzozowski's derivatives,
+avoiding their weakest point, namely the fact of being forced to quotient derivatives
+w.r.t. a suitable notion of equivalence in order to get a finite number of states
+(that is not essential for recognizing strings, but is crucial for comparing regular
+expressions).
+
+Our main data structure is the notion of pointed item, that is meant whose purpose
+is to encode a set of positions inside a regular expression.
+The idea of formalizing pointers inside a data type by means of a labelled version
+of the data type itself is probably one of the first, major lessons learned in the
+formalization of the metatheory of programming languages. For our purposes, it is
+enough to mark positions preceding individual characters, so we shall have two kinds
+of characters •a (pp a) and a (ps a) according to the case a is pointed or not. *)