2,770 research outputs found
Bounded Counter Languages
We show that deterministic finite automata equipped with two-way heads
are equivalent to deterministic machines with a single two-way input head and
linearly bounded counters if the accepted language is strictly bounded,
i.e., a subset of for a fixed sequence of symbols . Then we investigate linear speed-up for counter machines. Lower
and upper time bounds for concrete recognition problems are shown, implying
that in general linear speed-up does not hold for counter machines. For bounded
languages we develop a technique for speeding up computations by any constant
factor at the expense of adding a fixed number of counters
Eliminating Recursion from Monadic Datalog Programs on Trees
We study the problem of eliminating recursion from monadic datalog programs
on trees with an infinite set of labels. We show that the boundedness problem,
i.e., determining whether a datalog program is equivalent to some nonrecursive
one is undecidable but the decidability is regained if the descendant relation
is disallowed. Under similar restrictions we obtain decidability of the problem
of equivalence to a given nonrecursive program. We investigate the connection
between these two problems in more detail
Space bounds for processing contentless inputs
The space and time bounds of Turing machines which process contentless inputs, i.e., inputs of the form an are investigated. There is such a Turing machine which uses space bounded by log log n but not space bounded by any constant. Properties of this processor are given. The general properties of Turing machines processing contentless inputs are discussed. Any nontrivial processor can be transformed into a recognizer of a nonregular language in the same input alphabet and using exactly the same space. Finally, a theorem which establishes a hierarchy of contentless languages whose recognizers require at least log n space is given
Remarks on separating words
The separating words problem asks for the size of the smallest DFA needed to
distinguish between two words of length <= n (by accepting one and rejecting
the other). In this paper we survey what is known and unknown about the
problem, consider some variations, and prove several new results
Unary Pushdown Automata and Straight-Line Programs
We consider decision problems for deterministic pushdown automata over a
unary alphabet (udpda, for short). Udpda are a simple computation model that
accept exactly the unary regular languages, but can be exponentially more
succinct than finite-state automata. We complete the complexity landscape for
udpda by showing that emptiness (and thus universality) is P-hard, equivalence
and compressed membership problems are P-complete, and inclusion is
coNP-complete. Our upper bounds are based on a translation theorem between
udpda and straight-line programs over the binary alphabet (SLPs). We show that
the characteristic sequence of any udpda can be represented as a pair of
SLPs---one for the prefix, one for the lasso---that have size linear in the
size of the udpda and can be computed in polynomial time. Hence, decision
problems on udpda are reduced to decision problems on SLPs. Conversely, any SLP
can be converted in logarithmic space into a udpda, and this forms the basis
for our lower bound proofs. We show coNP-hardness of the ordered matching
problem for SLPs, from which we derive coNP-hardness for inclusion. In
addition, we complete the complexity landscape for unary nondeterministic
pushdown automata by showing that the universality problem is -hard, using a new class of integer expressions. Our techniques have
applications beyond udpda. We show that our results imply -completeness for a natural fragment of Presburger arithmetic and coNP lower
bounds for compressed matching problems with one-character wildcards
Edit Distance for Pushdown Automata
The edit distance between two words is the minimal number of word
operations (letter insertions, deletions, and substitutions) necessary to
transform to . The edit distance generalizes to languages
, where the edit distance from to
is the minimal number such that for every word from
there exists a word in with edit distance at
most . We study the edit distance computation problem between pushdown
automata and their subclasses. The problem of computing edit distance to a
pushdown automaton is undecidable, and in practice, the interesting question is
to compute the edit distance from a pushdown automaton (the implementation, a
standard model for programs with recursion) to a regular language (the
specification). In this work, we present a complete picture of decidability and
complexity for the following problems: (1)~deciding whether, for a given
threshold , the edit distance from a pushdown automaton to a finite
automaton is at most , and (2)~deciding whether the edit distance from a
pushdown automaton to a finite automaton is finite.Comment: An extended version of a paper accepted to ICALP 2015 with the same
title. The paper has been accepted to the LMCS journa
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