1,215 research outputs found
A Note on Limited Pushdown Alphabets in Stateless Deterministic Pushdown Automata
Recently, an infinite hierarchy of languages accepted by stateless
deterministic pushdown automata has been established based on the number of
pushdown symbols. However, the witness language for the n-th level of the
hierarchy is over an input alphabet with 2(n-1) elements. In this paper, we
improve this result by showing that a binary alphabet is sufficient to
establish this hierarchy. As a consequence of our construction, we solve the
open problem formulated by Meduna et al. Then we extend these results to
m-state realtime deterministic pushdown automata, for all m at least 1. The
existence of such a hierarchy for m-state deterministic pushdown automata is
left open
A Tighter Bound for the Determinization of Visibly Pushdown Automata
Visibly pushdown automata (VPA), introduced by Alur and Madhusuan in 2004, is
a subclass of pushdown automata whose stack behavior is completely determined
by the input symbol according to a fixed partition of the input alphabet. Since
its introduce, VPAs have been shown to be useful in various context, e.g., as
specification formalism for verification and as automaton model for processing
XML streams. Due to high complexity, however, implementation of formal
verification based on VPA framework is a challenge. In this paper we consider
the problem of implementing VPA-based model checking algorithms. For doing so,
we first present an improvement on upper bound for determinization of VPA.
Next, we propose simple on-the-fly algorithms to check universality and
inclusion problems of this automata class. Then, we implement the proposed
algorithms in a prototype tool. Finally, we conduct experiments on randomly
generated VPAs. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithms are
considerably faster than the standard ones
Highly Undecidable Problems For Infinite Computations
We show that many classical decision problems about 1-counter
omega-languages, context free omega-languages, or infinitary rational
relations, are -complete, hence located at the second level of the
analytical hierarchy, and "highly undecidable". In particular, the universality
problem, the inclusion problem, the equivalence problem, the determinizability
problem, the complementability problem, and the unambiguity problem are all
-complete for context-free omega-languages or for infinitary rational
relations. Topological and arithmetical properties of 1-counter
omega-languages, context free omega-languages, or infinitary rational
relations, are also highly undecidable. These very surprising results provide
the first examples of highly undecidable problems about the behaviour of very
simple finite machines like 1-counter automata or 2-tape automata.Comment: to appear in RAIRO-Theoretical Informatics and Application
Verification for Timed Automata extended with Unbounded Discrete Data Structures
We study decidability of verification problems for timed automata extended
with unbounded discrete data structures. More detailed, we extend timed
automata with a pushdown stack. In this way, we obtain a strong model that may
for instance be used to model real-time programs with procedure calls. It is
long known that the reachability problem for this model is decidable. The goal
of this paper is to identify subclasses of timed pushdown automata for which
the language inclusion problem and related problems are decidable
Decision Problems for Deterministic Pushdown Automata on Infinite Words
The article surveys some decidability results for DPDAs on infinite words
(omega-DPDA). We summarize some recent results on the decidability of the
regularity and the equivalence problem for the class of weak omega-DPDAs.
Furthermore, we present some new results on the parity index problem for
omega-DPDAs. For the specification of a parity condition, the states of the
omega-DPDA are assigned priorities (natural numbers), and a run is accepting if
the highest priority that appears infinitely often during a run is even. The
basic simplification question asks whether one can determine the minimal number
of priorities that are needed to accept the language of a given omega-DPDA. We
provide some decidability results on variations of this question for some
classes of omega-DPDAs.Comment: In Proceedings AFL 2014, arXiv:1405.527
Multi-Head Finite Automata: Characterizations, Concepts and Open Problems
Multi-head finite automata were introduced in (Rabin, 1964) and (Rosenberg,
1966). Since that time, a vast literature on computational and descriptional
complexity issues on multi-head finite automata documenting the importance of
these devices has been developed. Although multi-head finite automata are a
simple concept, their computational behavior can be already very complex and
leads to undecidable or even non-semi-decidable problems on these devices such
as, for example, emptiness, finiteness, universality, equivalence, etc. These
strong negative results trigger the study of subclasses and alternative
characterizations of multi-head finite automata for a better understanding of
the nature of non-recursive trade-offs and, thus, the borderline between
decidable and undecidable problems. In the present paper, we tour a fragment of
this literature
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
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
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