2 research outputs found
Descriptional Complexity of Finite Automata -- Selected Highlights
The state complexity, respectively, nondeterministic state complexity of a
regular language is the number of states of the minimal deterministic,
respectively, of a minimal nondeterministic finite automaton for . Some of
the most studied state complexity questions deal with size comparisons of
nondeterministic finite automata of differing degree of ambiguity. More
generally, if for a regular language we compare the size of description by a
finite automaton and by a more powerful language definition mechanism, such as
a context-free grammar, we encounter non-recursive trade-offs. Operational
state complexity studies the state complexity of the language resulting from a
regularity preserving operation as a function of the complexity of the argument
languages. Determining the state complexity of combined operations is generally
challenging and for general combinations of operations that include
intersection and marked concatenation it is uncomputable