The many facets of string transducers

Regular word transductions extend the robust notion of regular languages from a qualitative to a quantitative reasoning. They were already considered in early papers of formal language theory, but turned out to be much more challenging. The last decade brought considerable research around various transducer models, aiming to achieve similar robustness as for automata and languages. In this paper we survey some older and more recent results on string transducers. We present classical connections between automata, logic and algebra extended to transducers, some genuine definability questions, and review approaches to the equivalence problem

A Generalised Twinning Property for Minimisation of Cost Register Automata

Weighted automata (WA) extend finite-state automata by associating with transitions weights from a semiring S, defining functions from words to S. Recently, cost register automata (CRA) have been introduced as an alternative model to describe any function realised by a WA by means of a deterministic machine. Unambiguous WA over a monoid (M, ⊗) can equivalently be described by cost register automata whose registers take their values in M, and are updated by operations of the form x: = y ⊗ c, with c ∈ M. This class is denoted by CRA⊗c(M). We introduce a twinning property and a bounded variation property parametrised by an integer k, such that the corresponding notions introduced originally by Choffrut for finite-state transducers are obtained for k = 1. Given an unambiguous weighted automaton W over an infinitary group (G, ⊗) realizing some function f, we prove that the three following properties are equivalent: i) W satisfies the twinning property of order k, ii) f satisfies the k-bounded variation property, and iii) f can be described by a CRA⊗c(G) with at most k registers. In the spirit of tranducers, we actually prove this result in a more general setting by considering machines over the semiring of finite sets of elements from (G, ⊗): the three properties are still equivalent for such finite-valued weighted automata, that is the ones associating with words subsets of G of cardinality at most ℓ, for some natural ℓ. Moreover, we show that if the operation ⊗ of G is commutative and computable, then one can decide whether a WA satisfies the twinning property of order k. As a corollary, this allows to decide the register minimisation problem for the class CRA⊗c(G). Last, we prove that a similar result holds for finite-valued finite-state transducers, and that the register minimisation problem for the class CRA.c (B*) is Pspace-complete

Degree of Sequentiality of Weighted Automata

Weighted automata (WA) are an important formalism to describe quantitative properties. Obtaining equivalent deterministic machines is a longstanding research problem. In this paper we consider WA with a set semantics, meaning that the semantics is given by the set of weights of accepting runs. We focus on multi-sequential WA that are defined as finite unions of sequential WA. The problem we address is to minimize the size of this union. We call this minimum the degree of sequentiality of (the relation realized by) the WA. For a given positive integer k, we provide multiple characterizations of relations realized by a union of k sequential WA over an infinitary finitely generated group: a Lipschitz-like machine independent property, a pattern on the automaton (a new twinning property) and a subclass of cost register automata. When possible, we effectively translate a WA into an equivalent union of k sequential WA. We also provide a decision procedure for our twinning property for commutative computable groups thus allowing to compute the degree of sequentiality. Last, we show that these results also hold for word transducers and that the associated decision problem is PSPACE -complete

On Equivalence and Uniformisation Problems for Finite Transducers

Transductions are binary relations of finite words. For rational transductions, i.e., transductions defined by finite transducers, the inclusion, equivalence and sequential uniformisation problems are known to be undecidable. In this paper, we investigate stronger variants of inclusion, equivalence and sequential uniformisation, based on a general notion of transducer resynchronisation, and show their decidability. We also investigate the classes of finite-valued rational transductions and deterministic rational transductions, which are known to have a decidable equivalence problem. We show that sequential uniformisation is also decidable for them

On the decomposition of finite-valued streaming string transducers

We prove the following decomposition theorem: every 1-register streaming string transducer that associates a uniformly bounded number of outputs with each input can be effectively decomposed as a finite union of functional 1-register streaming string transducers. This theorem relies on a combinatorial result by Kortelainen concerning word equations with iterated factors. Our result implies the decidability of the equivalence problem for the considered class of transducers. This can be seen as a first step towards proving a more general decomposition theorem for streaming string transducers with multiple registers

On finitely ambiguous B\"uchi automata

Unambiguous B\"uchi automata, i.e. B\"uchi automata allowing only one accepting run per word, are a useful restriction of B\"uchi automata that is well-suited for probabilistic model-checking. In this paper we propose a more permissive variant, namely finitely ambiguous B\"uchi automata, a generalisation where each word has at most $k$ accepting runs, for some fixed $k$. We adapt existing notions and results concerning finite and bounded ambiguity of finite automata to the setting of $\omega$-languages and present a translation from arbitrary nondeterministic B\"uchi automata with $n$ states to finitely ambiguous automata with at most $3^n$ states and at most $n$ accepting runs per word

Quantitative Continuity and Computable Analysis in Coq

We give a number of formal proofs of theorems from the field of computable analysis. Many of our results specify executable algorithms that work on infinite inputs by means of operating on finite approximations and are proven correct in the sense of computable analysis. The development is done in the proof assistant Coq and heavily relies on the Incone library for information theoretic continuity. This library is developed by one of the authors and the results of this paper extend the library. While full executability in a formal development of mathematical statements about real numbers and the like is not a feature that is unique to the Incone library, its original contribution is to adhere to the conventions of computable analysis to provide a general purpose interface for algorithmic reasoning on continuous structures. The paper includes a brief description of the most important concepts of Incone and its sub libraries mf and Metric. The results that provide complete computational content include that the algebraic operations and the efficient limit operator on the reals are computable, that the countably infinite product of a space with itself is isomorphic to a space of functions, compatibility of the enumeration representation of subsets of natural numbers with the abstract definition of the space of open subsets of the natural numbers, and that continuous realizability implies sequential continuity. We also describe many non-computational results that support the correctness of definitions from the library. These include that the information theoretic notion of continuity used in the library is equivalent to the metric notion of continuity on Baire space, a complete comparison of the different concepts of continuity that arise from metric and represented space structures and the discontinuity of the unrestricted limit operator on the real numbers and the task of selecting an element of a closed subset of the natural numbers