Syntactic Complexity of R- and J-Trivial Regular Languages

The syntactic complexity of a regular language is the cardinality of its syntactic semigroup. The syntactic complexity of a subclass of the class of regular languages is the maximal syntactic complexity of languages in that class, taken as a function of the state complexity n of these languages. We study the syntactic complexity of R- and J-trivial regular languages, and prove that n! and floor of [e(n-1)!] are tight upper bounds for these languages, respectively. We also prove that 2^{n-1} is the tight upper bound on the state complexity of reversal of J-trivial regular languages.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl

Operations on Automata with All States Final

We study the complexity of basic regular operations on languages represented by incomplete deterministic or nondeterministic automata, in which all states are final. Such languages are known to be prefix-closed. We get tight bounds on both incomplete and nondeterministic state complexity of complement, intersection, union, concatenation, star, and reversal on prefix-closed languages.Comment: In Proceedings AFL 2014, arXiv:1405.527

Complexity of Left-Ideal, Suffix-Closed and Suffix-Free Regular Languages

A language $L$ over an alphabet $\Sigma$ is suffix-convex if, for any words $x,y,z\in\Sigma^*$, whenever $z$ and $xyz$ are in $L$, then so is $yz$. Suffix-convex languages include three special cases: left-ideal, suffix-closed, and suffix-free languages. We examine complexity properties of these three special classes of suffix-convex regular languages. In particular, we study the quotient/state complexity of boolean operations, product (concatenation), star, and reversal on these languages, as well as the size of their syntactic semigroups, and the quotient complexity of their atoms.Comment: 20 pages, 11 figures, 1 table. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1605.0669

Nondeterministic State Complexity for Suffix-Free Regular Languages

We investigate the nondeterministic state complexity of basic operations for suffix-free regular languages. The nondeterministic state complexity of an operation is the number of states that are necessary and sufficient in the worst-case for a minimal nondeterministic finite-state automaton that accepts the language obtained from the operation. We consider basic operations (catenation, union, intersection, Kleene star, reversal and complementation) and establish matching upper and lower bounds for each operation. In the case of complementation the upper and lower bounds differ by an additive constant of two.Comment: In Proceedings DCFS 2010, arXiv:1008.127

Syntactic Complexities of Nine Subclasses of Regular Languages

The syntactic complexity of a regular language is the cardinality of its syntactic semigroup. The syntactic complexity of a subclass of the class of regular languages is the maximal syntactic complexity of languages in that class, taken as a function of the state complexity n of these languages. We study the syntactic complexity of suffix-, bifix-, and factor-free regular languages, star-free languages including three subclasses, and R- and J-trivial regular languages. We found upper bounds on the syntactic complexities of these classes of languages. For R- and J-trivial regular languages, the upper bounds are n! and ⌊e(n-1)!⌋, respectively, and they are tight for n >= 1. Let C^n_k be the binomial coefficient ``n choose k''. For monotonic languages, the tight upper bound is C^{2n-1}_n. We also found tight upper bounds for partially monotonic and nearly monotonic languages. For the other classes of languages, we found tight upper bounds for languages with small state complexities, and we exhibited languages with maximal known syntactic complexities. We conjecture these lower bounds to be tight upper bounds for these languages. We also observed that, for some subclasses C of regular languages, the upper bound on state complexity of the reversal operation on languages in C can be met by languages in C with maximal syntactic complexity. For R- and J-trivial regular languages, we also determined tight upper bounds on the state complexity of the reversal operation

Advanced Topics on State Complexity of Combined Operations

State complexity is a fundamental topic in formal languages and automata theory. The study of state complexity is also strongly motivated by applications of finite automata in software engineering, programming languages, natural language and speech processing and other practical areas. Since many of these applications use automata of large sizes, it is important to know the number of states of the automata. In this thesis, we firstly discuss the state complexities of individual operations on regular languages, including union, intersection, star, catenation, reversal and so on. The state complexity of an operation on unary languages is usually different from that of the same operation on languages over a larger alphabet. Both kinds of state complexities are reviewed in the thesis. Secondly, we study the exact state complexities of twelve combined operations on regular languages. The state complexities of most of these combined operations are not equal to the compositions of the state complexities of the individual operations which make up these combined operations. We also explore the reason for this difference. Finally, we introduce the concept of estimation and approximation of state complexity. We show close estimates and approximations of the state complexities of six combined operations on regular languages which are good enough to use in practice