1,048 research outputs found
On external presentations of infinite graphs
The vertices of a finite state system are usually a subset of the natural
numbers. Most algorithms relative to these systems only use this fact to select
vertices.
For infinite state systems, however, the situation is different: in
particular, for such systems having a finite description, each state of the
system is a configuration of some machine. Then most algorithmic approaches
rely on the structure of these configurations. Such characterisations are said
internal. In order to apply algorithms detecting a structural property (like
identifying connected components) one may have first to transform the system in
order to fit the description needed for the algorithm. The problem of internal
characterisation is that it hides structural properties, and each solution
becomes ad hoc relatively to the form of the configurations.
On the contrary, external characterisations avoid explicit naming of the
vertices. Such characterisation are mostly defined via graph transformations.
In this paper we present two kind of external characterisations:
deterministic graph rewriting, which in turn characterise regular graphs,
deterministic context-free languages, and rational graphs. Inverse substitution
from a generator (like the complete binary tree) provides characterisation for
prefix-recognizable graphs, the Caucal Hierarchy and rational graphs. We
illustrate how these characterisation provide an efficient tool for the
representation of infinite state systems
Weighted Logics for Nested Words and Algebraic Formal Power Series
Nested words, a model for recursive programs proposed by Alur and Madhusudan,
have recently gained much interest. In this paper we introduce quantitative
extensions and study nested word series which assign to nested words elements
of a semiring. We show that regular nested word series coincide with series
definable in weighted logics as introduced by Droste and Gastin. For this we
establish a connection between nested words and the free bisemigroup. Applying
our result, we obtain characterizations of algebraic formal power series in
terms of weighted logics. This generalizes results of Lautemann, Schwentick and
Therien on context-free languages
Algebraic properties of structured context-free languages: old approaches and novel developments
The historical research line on the algebraic properties of structured CF
languages initiated by McNaughton's Parenthesis Languages has recently
attracted much renewed interest with the Balanced Languages, the Visibly
Pushdown Automata languages (VPDA), the Synchronized Languages, and the
Height-deterministic ones. Such families preserve to a varying degree the basic
algebraic properties of Regular languages: boolean closure, closure under
reversal, under concatenation, and Kleene star. We prove that the VPDA family
is strictly contained within the Floyd Grammars (FG) family historically known
as operator precedence. Languages over the same precedence matrix are known to
be closed under boolean operations, and are recognized by a machine whose pop
or push operations on the stack are purely determined by terminal letters. We
characterize VPDA's as the subclass of FG having a peculiarly structured set of
precedence relations, and balanced grammars as a further restricted case. The
non-counting invariance property of FG has a direct implication for VPDA too.Comment: Extended version of paper presented at WORDS2009, Salerno,Italy,
September 200
Precedence Automata and Languages
Operator precedence grammars define a classical Boolean and deterministic
context-free family (called Floyd languages or FLs). FLs have been shown to
strictly include the well-known visibly pushdown languages, and enjoy the same
nice closure properties. We introduce here Floyd automata, an equivalent
operational formalism for defining FLs. This also permits to extend the class
to deal with infinite strings to perform for instance model checking.Comment: Extended version of the paper which appeared in Proceedings of CSR
2011, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 6651, pp. 291-304, 2011.
Theorem 1 has been corrected and a complete proof is given in Appendi
Generalizing input-driven languages: theoretical and practical benefits
Regular languages (RL) are the simplest family in Chomsky's hierarchy. Thanks
to their simplicity they enjoy various nice algebraic and logic properties that
have been successfully exploited in many application fields. Practically all of
their related problems are decidable, so that they support automatic
verification algorithms. Also, they can be recognized in real-time.
Context-free languages (CFL) are another major family well-suited to
formalize programming, natural, and many other classes of languages; their
increased generative power w.r.t. RL, however, causes the loss of several
closure properties and of the decidability of important problems; furthermore
they need complex parsing algorithms. Thus, various subclasses thereof have
been defined with different goals, spanning from efficient, deterministic
parsing to closure properties, logic characterization and automatic
verification techniques.
Among CFL subclasses, so-called structured ones, i.e., those where the
typical tree-structure is visible in the sentences, exhibit many of the
algebraic and logic properties of RL, whereas deterministic CFL have been
thoroughly exploited in compiler construction and other application fields.
After surveying and comparing the main properties of those various language
families, we go back to operator precedence languages (OPL), an old family
through which R. Floyd pioneered deterministic parsing, and we show that they
offer unexpected properties in two fields so far investigated in totally
independent ways: they enable parsing parallelization in a more effective way
than traditional sequential parsers, and exhibit the same algebraic and logic
properties so far obtained only for less expressive language families
Weighted Operator Precedence Languages
In the last years renewed investigation of operator precedence languages (OPL) led to discover important properties thereof: OPL are closed with respect to all major operations, are characterized, besides the original grammar family, in terms of an automata family (OPA) and an MSO logic; furthermore they significantly generalize the well-known visibly pushdown languages (VPL). In another area of research, quantitative models of systems are also greatly in demand. In this paper, we lay the foundation to marry these two research fields. We introduce weighted operator precedence automata and show how they are both strict extensions of OPA and weighted visibly pushdown automata. We prove a Nivat-like result which shows that quantitative OPL can be described by unweighted OPA and very particular weighted OPA. In a BĂĽchi-like theorem, we show that weighted OPA are expressively equivalent to a weighted MSO-logic for OPL
Computing downward closures for stacked counter automata
The downward closure of a language of words is the set of all (not
necessarily contiguous) subwords of members of . It is well known that the
downward closure of any language is regular. Although the downward closure
seems to be a promising abstraction, there are only few language classes for
which an automaton for the downward closure is known to be computable.
It is shown here that for stacked counter automata, the downward closure is
computable. Stacked counter automata are finite automata with a storage
mechanism obtained by \emph{adding blind counters} and \emph{building stacks}.
Hence, they generalize pushdown and blind counter automata.
The class of languages accepted by these automata are precisely those in the
hierarchy obtained from the context-free languages by alternating two closure
operators: imposing semilinear constraints and taking the algebraic extension.
The main tool for computing downward closures is the new concept of Parikh
annotations. As a second application of Parikh annotations, it is shown that
the hierarchy above is strict at every level.Comment: 34 pages, 1 figure; submitte
On Buffon Machines and Numbers
The well-know needle experiment of Buffon can be regarded as an analog (i.e.,
continuous) device that stochastically "computes" the number 2/pi ~ 0.63661,
which is the experiment's probability of success. Generalizing the experiment
and simplifying the computational framework, we consider probability
distributions, which can be produced perfectly, from a discrete source of
unbiased coin flips. We describe and analyse a few simple Buffon machines that
generate geometric, Poisson, and logarithmic-series distributions. We provide
human-accessible Buffon machines, which require a dozen coin flips or less, on
average, and produce experiments whose probabilities of success are expressible
in terms of numbers such as, exp(-1), log 2, sqrt(3), cos(1/4), aeta(5).
Generally, we develop a collection of constructions based on simple
probabilistic mechanisms that enable one to design Buffon experiments involving
compositions of exponentials and logarithms, polylogarithms, direct and inverse
trigonometric functions, algebraic and hypergeometric functions, as well as
functions defined by integrals, such as the Gaussian error function.Comment: Largely revised version with references and figures added. 12 pages.
In ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA'2011
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