Pebble alternating tree-walking automata and their recognizing power

Pebble tree-walking automata with alternation were first investigated by Milo, Suciu and Vianu (2003), who showed that tree languages recognized by these devices are exactly the regular tree languages. We strengthen this by proving the same result for pebble automata with "strong pebble handling" which means that pebbles can be lifted independently of the position of the reading head and without moving the reading head. Then we make a comparison among some restricted versions of these automata. We will show that the deterministic and non-looping pebble alternating tree-walking automata are strictly less powerful than their nondeterministic counterparts, i.e., they do not recognize all the regular tree languages. Moreover, there is a proper hierarchy of recognizing capacity of deterministic and non-looping n-pebble alternating tree-walking automata with respect to the number of pebbles, i.e., for each n ≥ 0, deterministic and non-looping (n+1)-pebble alternating tree-walking automata are more powerful than their n-pebble counterparts

Automata with Nested Pebbles Capture First-Order Logic with Transitive Closure

String languages recognizable in (deterministic) log-space are characterized either by two-way (deterministic) multi-head automata, or following Immerman, by first-order logic with (deterministic) transitive closure. Here we elaborate this result, and match the number of heads to the arity of the transitive closure. More precisely, first-order logic with k-ary deterministic transitive closure has the same power as deterministic automata walking on their input with k heads, additionally using a finite set of nested pebbles. This result is valid for strings, ordered trees, and in general for families of graphs having a fixed automaton that can be used to traverse the nodes of each of the graphs in the family. Other examples of such families are grids, toruses, and rectangular mazes. For nondeterministic automata, the logic is restricted to positive occurrences of transitive closure. The special case of k=1 for trees, shows that single-head deterministic tree-walking automata with nested pebbles are characterized by first-order logic with unary deterministic transitive closure. This refines our earlier result that placed these automata between first-order and monadic second-order logic on trees.Comment: Paper for Logical Methods in Computer Science, 27 pages, 1 figur

Weighted tree-walking automata

We define weighted tree-walking automata. We show that the class of tree series recognizable by weighted tree-walking automata over a commutative semiring K is a subclass of the class of regular tree series over K. If K is not a ring, then the inclusion is strict

Linear Bounded Composition of Tree-Walking Tree Transducers: Linear Size Increase and Complexity

Compositions of tree-walking tree transducers form a hierarchy with respect to the number of transducers in the composition. As main technical result it is proved that any such composition can be realized as a linear bounded composition, which means that the sizes of the intermediate results can be chosen to be at most linear in the size of the output tree. This has consequences for the expressiveness and complexity of the translations in the hierarchy. First, if the computed translation is a function of linear size increase, i.e., the size of the output tree is at most linear in the size of the input tree, then it can be realized by just one, deterministic, tree-walking tree transducer. For compositions of deterministic transducers it is decidable whether or not the translation is of linear size increase. Second, every composition of deterministic transducers can be computed in deterministic linear time on a RAM and in deterministic linear space on a Turing machine, measured in the sum of the sizes of the input and output tree. Similarly, every composition of nondeterministic transducers can be computed in simultaneous polynomial time and linear space on a nondeterministic Turing machine. Their output tree languages are deterministic context-sensitive, i.e., can be recognized in deterministic linear space on a Turing machine. The membership problem for compositions of nondeterministic translations is nondeterministic polynomial time and deterministic linear space. The membership problem for the composition of a nondeterministic and a deterministic tree-walking tree translation (for a nondeterministic IO macro tree translation) is log-space reducible to a context-free language, whereas the membership problem for the composition of a deterministic and a nondeterministic tree-walking tree translation (for a nondeterministic OI macro tree translation) is possibly NP-complete

XML navigation and transformation by tree-walking automata and transducers with visible and invisible pebbles

Algorithms and the Foundations of Software technolog

Structural and Computational Existence Results for Multidimensional Subshifts

Symbolic dynamics is a branch of mathematics that studies the structure of infinite sequences of symbols, or in the multidimensional case, infinite grids of symbols. Classes of such sequences and grids defined by collections of forbidden patterns are called subshifts, and subshifts of finite type are defined by finitely many forbidden patterns. The simplest examples of multidimensional subshifts are sets of Wang tilings, infinite arrangements of square tiles with colored edges, where adjacent edges must have the same color. Multidimensional symbolic dynamics has strong connections to computability theory, since most of the basic properties of subshifts cannot be recognized by computer programs, but are instead characterized by some higher-level notion of computability. This dissertation focuses on the structure of multidimensional subshifts, and the ways in which it relates to their computational properties. In the first part, we study the subpattern posets and Cantor-Bendixson ranks of countable subshifts of finite type, which can be seen as measures of their structural complexity. We show, by explicitly constructing subshifts with the desired properties, that both notions are essentially restricted only by computability conditions. In the second part of the dissertation, we study different methods of defining (classes of ) multidimensional subshifts, and how they relate to each other and existing methods. We present definitions that use monadic second-order logic, a more restricted kind of logical quantification called quantifier extension, and multi-headed finite state machines. Two of the definitions give rise to hierarchies of subshift classes, which are a priori infinite, but which we show to collapse into finitely many levels. The quantifier extension provides insight to the somewhat mysterious class of multidimensional sofic subshifts, since we prove a characterization for the class of subshifts that can extend a sofic subshift into a nonsofic one.Symbolidynamiikka on matematiikan ala, joka tutkii äärettömän pituisten symbolijonojen ominaisuuksia, tai moniulotteisessa tapauksessa äärettömän laajoja symbolihiloja. Siirtoavaruudet ovat tällaisten jonojen tai hilojen kokoelmia, jotka on määritelty kieltämällä jokin joukko äärellisen kokoisia kuvioita, ja äärellisen tyypin siirtoavaruudet saadaan kieltämällä vain äärellisen monta kuviota. Wangin tiilitykset ovat yksinkertaisin esimerkki moniulotteisista siirtoavaruuksista. Ne ovat värillisistä neliöistä muodostettuja tiilityksiä, joissa kaikkien vierekkäisten sivujen on oltava samanvärisiä. Moniulotteinen symbolidynamiikka on vahvasti yhteydessä laskettavuuden teoriaan, sillä monia siirtoavaruuksien perusominaisuuksia ei ole mahdollista tunnistaa tietokoneohjelmilla, vaan korkeamman tason laskennallisilla malleilla. Väitöskirjassani tutkin moniulotteisten siirtoavaruuksien rakennetta ja sen suhdetta niiden laskennallisiin ominaisuuksiin. Ensimmäisessä osassa keskityn tiettyihin äärellisen tyypin siirtoavaruuksien rakenteellisiin ominaisuuksiin: äärellisten kuvioiden muodostamaan järjestykseen ja Cantor-Bendixsonin astelukuun. Halutunlaisia siirtoavaruuksia rakentamalla osoitan, että molemmat ominaisuudet ovat olennaisesti laskennallisten ehtojen rajoittamia. Väitöskirjan toisessa osassa tutkin erilaisia tapoja määritellä moniulotteisia siirtoavaruuksia, sekä sitä, miten nämä tavat vertautuvat toisiinsa ja tunnettuihin siirtoavaruuksien luokkiin. Käsittelen määritelmiä, jotka perustuvat toisen kertaluvun logiikkaan, kvanttorilaajennukseksi kutsuttuun rajoitettuun loogiseen kvantifiointiin, sekä monipäisiin äärellisiin automaatteihin. Näistä kolmesta määritelmästä kahteen liittyy erilliset siirtoavaruuksien hierarkiat, joiden todistan romahtavan äärellisen korkuisiksi. Kvanttorilaajennuksen tutkimus valottaa myös niin kutsuttujen sofisten siirtoavaruuksien rakennetta, jota ei vielä tunneta hyvin: kyseisessä luvussa selvitän tarkasti, mitkä siirtoavaruudet voivat laajentaa sofisen avaruuden ei-sofiseksi.Siirretty Doriast