Deterministic stack automata and the quotient operator

AbstractA stack automaton is a pushdown automaton with the added privilege of scanning the contents of its pushdown tape without erasing. In this paper, the deterministic stack automaton with a one-way input (dsa) is considered.It is shown that if L is a language accepted by a dsa and R is a regular set, then L/R={w| for some x in R, wx is in L}, is accepted by a dsa. As a corollary, end markers are not needed on the input of the dsa. It is also shown that if L is accepted by a dsa, then Max(L)={w|w in L and for no x is wx is wx in L} is accepted by a dsa

Small NFAs from Regular Expressions: Some Experimental Results

Regular expressions (res), because of their succinctness and clear syntax, are the common choice to represent regular languages. However, efficient pattern matching or word recognition depend on the size of the equivalent nondeterministic finite automata (NFA). We present the implementation of several algorithms for constructing small epsilon-free NFAss from res within the FAdo system, and a comparison of regular expression measures and NFA sizes based on experimental results obtained from uniform random generated res. For this analysis, nonredundant res and reduced res in star normal form were considered.Comment: Proceedings of 6th Conference on Computability in Europe (CIE 2010), pages 194-203, Ponta Delgada, Azores, Portugal, June/July 201

Towards a Uniform Theory of Effectful State Machines

Using recent developments in coalgebraic and monad-based semantics, we present a uniform study of various notions of machines, e.g. finite state machines, multi-stack machines, Turing machines, valence automata, and weighted automata. They are instances of Jacobs' notion of a T-automaton, where T is a monad. We show that the generic language semantics for T-automata correctly instantiates the usual language semantics for a number of known classes of machines/languages, including regular, context-free, recursively-enumerable and various subclasses of context free languages (e.g. deterministic and real-time ones). Moreover, our approach provides new generic techniques for studying the expressivity power of various machine-based models.Comment: final version accepted by TOC

Separation of Test-Free Propositional Dynamic Logics over Context-Free Languages

For a class L of languages let PDL[L] be an extension of Propositional Dynamic Logic which allows programs to be in a language of L rather than just to be regular. If L contains a non-regular language, PDL[L] can express non-regular properties, in contrast to pure PDL. For regular, visibly pushdown and deterministic context-free languages, the separation of the respective PDLs can be proven by automata-theoretic techniques. However, these techniques introduce non-determinism on the automata side. As non-determinism is also the difference between DCFL and CFL, these techniques seem to be inappropriate to separate PDL[DCFL] from PDL[CFL]. Nevertheless, this separation is shown but for programs without test operators.Comment: In Proceedings GandALF 2011, arXiv:1106.081

Testing the Equivalence of Regular Languages

The minimal deterministic finite automaton is generally used to determine regular languages equality. Antimirov and Mosses proposed a rewrite system for deciding regular expressions equivalence of which Almeida et al. presented an improved variant. Hopcroft and Karp proposed an almost linear algorithm for testing the equivalence of two deterministic finite automata that avoids minimisation. In this paper we improve the best-case running time, present an extension of this algorithm to non-deterministic finite automata, and establish a relationship between this algorithm and the one proposed in Almeida et al. We also present some experimental comparative results. All these algorithms are closely related with the recent coalgebraic approach to automata proposed by Rutten

Scalar and Vectorial mu-calculus with Atoms

We study an extension of modal $\mu$-calculus to sets with atoms and we study its basic properties. Model checking is decidable on orbit-finite structures, and a correspondence to parity games holds. On the other hand, satisfiability becomes undecidable. We also show expressive limitations of atom-enriched $\mu$-calculi, and explain how their expressive power depends on the structure of atoms used, and on the choice between basic or vectorial syntax

Deterministic Real-Time Tree-Walking-Storage Automata

We study deterministic tree-walking-storage automata, which are finite-state devices equipped with a tree-like storage. These automata are generalized stack automata, where the linear stack storage is replaced by a non-linear tree-like stack. Therefore, tree-walking-storage automata have the ability to explore the interior of the tree storage without altering the contents, with the possible moves of the tree pointer corresponding to those of tree-walking automata. In addition, a tree-walking-storage automaton can append (push) non-existent descendants to a tree node and remove (pop) leaves from the tree. Here we are particularly considering the capacities of deterministic tree-walking-storage automata working in real time. It is shown that even the non-erasing variant can accept rather complicated unary languages as, for example, the language of words whose lengths are powers of two, or the language of words whose lengths are Fibonacci numbers. Comparing the computational capacities with automata from the classical automata hierarchy, we derive that the families of languages accepted by real-time deterministic (non-erasing) tree-walking-storage automata is located between the regular and the deterministic context-sensitive languages. There is a context-free language that is not accepted by any real-time deterministic tree-walking-storage automaton. On the other hand, these devices accept a unary language in non-erasing mode that cannot be accepted by any classical stack automaton, even in erasing mode and arbitrary time. Basic closure properties of the induced families of languages are shown. In particular, we consider Boolean operations (complementation, union, intersection) and AFL operations (union, intersection with regular languages, homomorphism, inverse homomorphism, concatenation, iteration). It turns out that the two families in question have the same properties and, in particular, share all but one of these closure properties with the important family of deterministic context-free languages.Comment: In Proceedings NCMA 2023, arXiv:2309.0733