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Conditions Enforcing Regularity of Context-Free Languages ; CU-CS-223-82
Circular Languages Generated by Complete Splicing Systems and Pure Unitary Languages
Circular splicing systems are a formal model of a generative mechanism of
circular words, inspired by a recombinant behaviour of circular DNA. Some
unanswered questions are related to the computational power of such systems,
and finding a characterization of the class of circular languages generated by
circular splicing systems is still an open problem. In this paper we solve this
problem for complete systems, which are special finite circular splicing
systems. We show that a circular language L is generated by a complete system
if and only if the set Lin(L) of all words corresponding to L is a pure unitary
language generated by a set closed under the conjugacy relation. The class of
pure unitary languages was introduced by A. Ehrenfeucht, D. Haussler, G.
Rozenberg in 1983, as a subclass of the class of context-free languages,
together with a characterization of regular pure unitary languages by means of
a decidable property. As a direct consequence, we characterize (regular)
circular languages generated by complete systems. We can also decide whether
the language generated by a complete system is regular. Finally, we point out
that complete systems have the same computational power as finite simple
systems, an easy type of circular splicing system defined in the literature
from the very beginning, when only one rule is allowed. From our results on
complete systems, it follows that finite simple systems generate a class of
context-free languages containing non-regular languages, showing the
incorrectness of a longstanding result on simple systems