1,673 research outputs found
Automata with Nested Pebbles Capture First-Order Logic with Transitive Closure
String languages recognizable in (deterministic) log-space are characterized
either by two-way (deterministic) multi-head automata, or following Immerman,
by first-order logic with (deterministic) transitive closure. Here we elaborate
this result, and match the number of heads to the arity of the transitive
closure. More precisely, first-order logic with k-ary deterministic transitive
closure has the same power as deterministic automata walking on their input
with k heads, additionally using a finite set of nested pebbles. This result is
valid for strings, ordered trees, and in general for families of graphs having
a fixed automaton that can be used to traverse the nodes of each of the graphs
in the family. Other examples of such families are grids, toruses, and
rectangular mazes. For nondeterministic automata, the logic is restricted to
positive occurrences of transitive closure.
The special case of k=1 for trees, shows that single-head deterministic
tree-walking automata with nested pebbles are characterized by first-order
logic with unary deterministic transitive closure. This refines our earlier
result that placed these automata between first-order and monadic second-order
logic on trees.Comment: Paper for Logical Methods in Computer Science, 27 pages, 1 figur
Linearly bounded infinite graphs
Linearly bounded Turing machines have been mainly studied as acceptors for
context-sensitive languages. We define a natural class of infinite automata
representing their observable computational behavior, called linearly bounded
graphs. These automata naturally accept the same languages as the linearly
bounded machines defining them. We present some of their structural properties
as well as alternative characterizations in terms of rewriting systems and
context-sensitive transductions. Finally, we compare these graphs to rational
graphs, which are another class of automata accepting the context-sensitive
languages, and prove that in the bounded-degree case, rational graphs are a
strict sub-class of linearly bounded graphs
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
Quantum finite automata and linear context-free languages: a decidable problem
We consider the so-called measure once finite quantum automata model introduced by Moore and Crutchfield in 2000. We show that given a language recognized by such a device and a linear context-free language, it is recursively decidable whether or not they have a nonempty intersection. This extends a result of Blondel et al. which can be interpreted as solving the problem with the free monoid in place of the family of linear context-free languages. © 2013 Springer-Verlag
One-Way Reversible and Quantum Finite Automata with Advice
We examine the characteristic features of reversible and quantum computations
in the presence of supplementary external information, known as advice. In
particular, we present a simple, algebraic characterization of languages
recognized by one-way reversible finite automata augmented with deterministic
advice. With a further elaborate argument, we prove a similar but slightly
weaker result for bounded-error one-way quantum finite automata with advice.
Immediate applications of those properties lead to containments and separations
among various language families when they are assisted by appropriately chosen
advice. We further demonstrate the power and limitation of randomized advice
and quantum advice when they are given to one-way quantum finite automata.Comment: A4, 10pt, 1 figure, 31 pages. This is a complete version of an
extended abstract appeared in the Proceedings of the 6th International
Conference on Language and Automata Theory and Applications (LATA 2012),
March 5-9, 2012, A Coruna, Spain, Lecture Notes in Computer Science,
Springer-Verlag, Vol.7183, pp.526-537, 201
Precedence Automata and Languages
Operator precedence grammars define a classical Boolean and deterministic
context-free family (called Floyd languages or FLs). FLs have been shown to
strictly include the well-known visibly pushdown languages, and enjoy the same
nice closure properties. We introduce here Floyd automata, an equivalent
operational formalism for defining FLs. This also permits to extend the class
to deal with infinite strings to perform for instance model checking.Comment: Extended version of the paper which appeared in Proceedings of CSR
2011, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 6651, pp. 291-304, 2011.
Theorem 1 has been corrected and a complete proof is given in Appendi
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