Generalizing input-driven languages: theoretical and practical benefits

Regular languages (RL) are the simplest family in Chomsky's hierarchy. Thanks to their simplicity they enjoy various nice algebraic and logic properties that have been successfully exploited in many application fields. Practically all of their related problems are decidable, so that they support automatic verification algorithms. Also, they can be recognized in real-time. Context-free languages (CFL) are another major family well-suited to formalize programming, natural, and many other classes of languages; their increased generative power w.r.t. RL, however, causes the loss of several closure properties and of the decidability of important problems; furthermore they need complex parsing algorithms. Thus, various subclasses thereof have been defined with different goals, spanning from efficient, deterministic parsing to closure properties, logic characterization and automatic verification techniques. Among CFL subclasses, so-called structured ones, i.e., those where the typical tree-structure is visible in the sentences, exhibit many of the algebraic and logic properties of RL, whereas deterministic CFL have been thoroughly exploited in compiler construction and other application fields. After surveying and comparing the main properties of those various language families, we go back to operator precedence languages (OPL), an old family through which R. Floyd pioneered deterministic parsing, and we show that they offer unexpected properties in two fields so far investigated in totally independent ways: they enable parsing parallelization in a more effective way than traditional sequential parsers, and exhibit the same algebraic and logic properties so far obtained only for less expressive language families

Resynchronizing Classes of Word Relations

A natural approach to define binary word relations over a finite alphabet A is through two-tape finite state automata that recognize regular languages over {1, 2} x A, where (i,a) is interpreted as reading letter a from tape i. Accordingly, a word w in L denotes the pair (u_1,u_2) in A^* x A^* in which u_i is the projection of w onto i-labelled letters. While this formalism defines the well-studied class of Rational relations (a.k.a. non-deterministic finite state transducers), enforcing restrictions on the reading regime from the tapes, which we call synchronization, yields various sub-classes of relations. Such synchronization restrictions are imposed through regular properties on the projection of the language onto {1,2}. In this way, for each regular language C subseteq {1,2}^*, one obtains a class Rel({C}) of relations. Regular, Recognizable, and length-preserving rational relations are all examples of classes that can be defined in this way. We study the problem of containment for synchronized classes of relations: given C,D subseteq {1,2}^*, is Rel({C}) subseteq Rel({D})? We show a characterization in terms of C and D which gives a decidability procedure to test for class inclusion. This also yields a procedure to re-synchronize languages from {1, 2} x A preserving the denoted relation whenever the inclusion holds

Finite state verifiers with constant randomness

We give a new characterization of $\mathsf{NL}$ as the class of languages whose members have certificates that can be verified with small error in polynomial time by finite state machines that use a constant number of random bits, as opposed to its conventional description in terms of deterministic logarithmic-space verifiers. It turns out that allowing two-way interaction with the prover does not change the class of verifiable languages, and that no polynomially bounded amount of randomness is useful for constant-memory computers when used as language recognizers, or public-coin verifiers. A corollary of our main result is that the class of outcome problems corresponding to O(log n)-space bounded games of incomplete information where the universal player is allowed a constant number of moves equals NL.Comment: 17 pages. An improved versio

Fragments of first-order logic over infinite words

We give topological and algebraic characterizations as well as language theoretic descriptions of the following subclasses of first-order logic FO[<] for omega-languages: Sigma_2, FO^2, the intersection of FO^2 and Sigma_2, and Delta_2 (and by duality Pi_2 and the intersection of FO^2 and Pi_2). These descriptions extend the respective results for finite words. In particular, we relate the above fragments to language classes of certain (unambiguous) polynomials. An immediate consequence is the decidability of the membership problem of these classes, but this was shown before by Wilke and Bojanczyk and is therefore not our main focus. The paper is about the interplay of algebraic, topological, and language theoretic properties.Comment: Conference version presented at 26th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science, STACS 200

Multi-Head Finite Automata: Characterizations, Concepts and Open Problems

Multi-head finite automata were introduced in (Rabin, 1964) and (Rosenberg, 1966). Since that time, a vast literature on computational and descriptional complexity issues on multi-head finite automata documenting the importance of these devices has been developed. Although multi-head finite automata are a simple concept, their computational behavior can be already very complex and leads to undecidable or even non-semi-decidable problems on these devices such as, for example, emptiness, finiteness, universality, equivalence, etc. These strong negative results trigger the study of subclasses and alternative characterizations of multi-head finite automata for a better understanding of the nature of non-recursive trade-offs and, thus, the borderline between decidable and undecidable problems. In the present paper, we tour a fragment of this literature

Logical and Algebraic Characterizations of Rational Transductions

Rational word languages can be defined by several equivalent means: finite state automata, rational expressions, finite congruences, or monadic second-order (MSO) logic. The robust subclass of aperiodic languages is defined by: counter-free automata, star-free expressions, aperiodic (finite) congruences, or first-order (FO) logic. In particular, their algebraic characterization by aperiodic congruences allows to decide whether a regular language is aperiodic. We lift this decidability result to rational transductions, i.e., word-to-word functions defined by finite state transducers. In this context, logical and algebraic characterizations have also been proposed. Our main result is that one can decide if a rational transduction (given as a transducer) is in a given decidable congruence class. We also establish a transfer result from logic-algebra equivalences over languages to equivalences over transductions. As a consequence, it is decidable if a rational transduction is first-order definable, and we show that this problem is PSPACE-complete

Macro tree transducers

Macro tree transducers are a combination of top-down tree transducers and macro grammars. They serve as a model for syntax-directed semantics in which context information can be handled. In this paper the formal model of macro tree transducers is studied by investigating typical automata theoretical topics like composition, decomposition, domains, and ranges of the induced translation classes. The extension with regular look-ahead is considered

Monadic Second-Order Logic with Arbitrary Monadic Predicates

We study Monadic Second-Order Logic (MSO) over finite words, extended with (non-uniform arbitrary) monadic predicates. We show that it defines a class of languages that has algebraic, automata-theoretic and machine-independent characterizations. We consider the regularity question: given a language in this class, when is it regular? To answer this, we show a substitution property and the existence of a syntactical predicate. We give three applications. The first two are to give very simple proofs that the Straubing Conjecture holds for all fragments of MSO with monadic predicates, and that the Crane Beach Conjecture holds for MSO with monadic predicates. The third is to show that it is decidable whether a language defined by an MSO formula with morphic predicates is regular.Comment: Conference version: MFCS'14, Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science Journal version: ToCL'17, Transactions on Computational Logi

On Varieties of Automata Enriched with an Algebraic Structure (Extended Abstract)

Eilenberg correspondence, based on the concept of syntactic monoids, relates varieties of regular languages with pseudovarieties of finite monoids. Various modifications of this correspondence related more general classes of regular languages with classes of more complex algebraic objects. Such generalized varieties also have natural counterparts formed by classes of finite automata equipped with a certain additional algebraic structure. In this survey, we overview several variants of such varieties of enriched automata.Comment: In Proceedings AFL 2014, arXiv:1405.527

Index problems for game automata

For a given regular language of infinite trees, one can ask about the minimal number of priorities needed to recognize this language with a non-deterministic, alternating, or weak alternating parity automaton. These questions are known as, respectively, the non-deterministic, alternating, and weak Rabin-Mostowski index problems. Whether they can be answered effectively is a long-standing open problem, solved so far only for languages recognizable by deterministic automata (the alternating variant trivializes). We investigate a wider class of regular languages, recognizable by so-called game automata, which can be seen as the closure of deterministic ones under complementation and composition. Game automata are known to recognize languages arbitrarily high in the alternating Rabin-Mostowski index hierarchy; that is, the alternating index problem does not trivialize any more. Our main contribution is that all three index problems are decidable for languages recognizable by game automata. Additionally, we show that it is decidable whether a given regular language can be recognized by a game automaton