107 research outputs found
Regular Methods for Operator Precedence Languages
The operator precedence languages (OPLs) represent the largest known subclass of the context-free languages which enjoys all desirable closure and decidability properties. This includes the decidability of language inclusion, which is the ultimate verification problem. Operator precedence grammars, automata, and logics have been investigated and used, for example, to verify programs with arithmetic expressions and exceptions (both of which are deterministic pushdown but lie outside the scope of the visibly pushdown languages). In this paper, we complete the picture and give, for the first time, an algebraic characterization of the class of OPLs in the form of a syntactic congruence that has finitely many equivalence classes exactly for the operator precedence languages. This is a generalization of the celebrated Myhill-Nerode theorem for the regular languages to OPLs. As one of the consequences, we show that universality and language inclusion for nondeterministic operator precedence automata can be solved by an antichain algorithm. Antichain algorithms avoid determinization and complementation through an explicit subset construction, by leveraging a quasi-order on words, which allows the pruning of the search space for counterexample words without sacrificing completeness. Antichain algorithms can be implemented symbolically, and these implementations are today the best-performing algorithms in practice for the inclusion of finite automata. We give a generic construction of the quasi-order needed for antichain algorithms from a finite syntactic congruence. This yields the first antichain algorithm for OPLs, an algorithm that solves the ExpTime-hard language inclusion problem for OPLs in exponential time
Learning to Prove Safety over Parameterised Concurrent Systems (Full Version)
We revisit the classic problem of proving safety over parameterised
concurrent systems, i.e., an infinite family of finite-state concurrent systems
that are represented by some finite (symbolic) means. An example of such an
infinite family is a dining philosopher protocol with any number n of processes
(n being the parameter that defines the infinite family). Regular model
checking is a well-known generic framework for modelling parameterised
concurrent systems, where an infinite set of configurations (resp. transitions)
is represented by a regular set (resp. regular transducer). Although verifying
safety properties in the regular model checking framework is undecidable in
general, many sophisticated semi-algorithms have been developed in the past
fifteen years that can successfully prove safety in many practical instances.
In this paper, we propose a simple solution to synthesise regular inductive
invariants that makes use of Angluin's classic L* algorithm (and its variants).
We provide a termination guarantee when the set of configurations reachable
from a given set of initial configurations is regular. We have tested L*
algorithm on standard (as well as new) examples in regular model checking
including the dining philosopher protocol, the dining cryptographer protocol,
and several mutual exclusion protocols (e.g. Bakery, Burns, Szymanski, and
German). Our experiments show that, despite the simplicity of our solution, it
can perform at least as well as existing semi-algorithms.Comment: Full version of FMCAD'17 pape
Weak Mso with the Unbounding Quantifier
A new class of languages of infinite words is introduced, called the
max-regular languages, extending the class of -regular languages. The
class has two equivalent descriptions: in terms of automata (a type of
deterministic counter automaton), and in terms of logic (weak monadic
second-order logic with a bounding quantifier). Effective translations between
the logic and automata are given
Ambiguity, Weakness, and Regularity in Probabilistic B\"uchi Automata
Probabilistic B\"uchi automata are a natural generalization of PFA to
infinite words, but have been studied in-depth only rather recently and many
interesting questions are still open. PBA are known to accept, in general, a
class of languages that goes beyond the regular languages. In this work we
extend the known classes of restricted PBA which are still regular, strongly
relying on notions concerning ambiguity in classical omega-automata.
Furthermore, we investigate the expressivity of the not yet considered but
natural class of weak PBA, and we also show that the regularity problem for
weak PBA is undecidable
Constructing Deterministic ?-Automata from Examples by an Extension of the RPNI Algorithm
The RPNI algorithm (Oncina, Garcia 1992) constructs deterministic finite automata from finite sets of negative and positive example words. We propose and analyze an extension of this algorithm to deterministic ?-automata with different types of acceptance conditions. In order to obtain this generalization of RPNI, we develop algorithms for the standard acceptance conditions of ?-automata that check for a given set of example words and a deterministic transition system, whether these example words can be accepted in the transition system with a corresponding acceptance condition. Based on these algorithms, we can define the extension of RPNI to infinite words. We prove that it can learn all deterministic ?-automata with an informative right congruence in the limit with polynomial time and data. We also show that the algorithm, while it can learn some automata that do not have an informative right congruence, cannot learn deterministic ?-automata for all regular ?-languages in the limit. Finally, we also prove that active learning with membership and equivalence queries is not easier for automata with an informative right congruence than for general deterministic ?-automata
The Isomorphism Relation Between Tree-Automatic Structures
An -tree-automatic structure is a relational structure whose domain
and relations are accepted by Muller or Rabin tree automata. We investigate in
this paper the isomorphism problem for -tree-automatic structures. We
prove first that the isomorphism relation for -tree-automatic boolean
algebras (respectively, partial orders, rings, commutative rings, non
commutative rings, non commutative groups, nilpotent groups of class n >1) is
not determined by the axiomatic system ZFC. Then we prove that the isomorphism
problem for -tree-automatic boolean algebras (respectively, partial
orders, rings, commutative rings, non commutative rings, non commutative
groups, nilpotent groups of class n >1) is neither a -set nor a
-set
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