35,272 research outputs found
Testing the Equivalence of Regular Languages
The minimal deterministic finite automaton is generally used to determine
regular languages equality. Antimirov and Mosses proposed a rewrite system for
deciding regular expressions equivalence of which Almeida et al. presented an
improved variant. Hopcroft and Karp proposed an almost linear algorithm for
testing the equivalence of two deterministic finite automata that avoids
minimisation. In this paper we improve the best-case running time, present an
extension of this algorithm to non-deterministic finite automata, and establish
a relationship between this algorithm and the one proposed in Almeida et al. We
also present some experimental comparative results. All these algorithms are
closely related with the recent coalgebraic approach to automata proposed by
Rutten
On the equivalence, containment, and covering problems for the regular and context-free languages
We consider the complexity of the equivalence and containment problems for regular expressions and context-free grammars, concentrating on the relationship between complexity and various language properties. Finiteness and boundedness of languages are shown to play important roles in the complexity of these problems. An encoding into grammars of Turing machine computations exponential in the size of the grammar is used to prove several exponential lower bounds. These lower bounds include exponential time for testing equivalence of grammars generating finite sets, and exponential space for testing equivalence of non-self-embedding grammars. Several problems which might be complex because of this encoding are shown to simplify for linear grammars. Other problems considered include grammatical covering and structural equivalence for right-linear, linear, and arbitrary grammars
Global Numerical Constraints on Trees
We introduce a logical foundation to reason on tree structures with
constraints on the number of node occurrences. Related formalisms are limited
to express occurrence constraints on particular tree regions, as for instance
the children of a given node. By contrast, the logic introduced in the present
work can concisely express numerical bounds on any region, descendants or
ancestors for instance. We prove that the logic is decidable in single
exponential time even if the numerical constraints are in binary form. We also
illustrate the usage of the logic in the description of numerical constraints
on multi-directional path queries on XML documents. Furthermore, numerical
restrictions on regular languages (XML schemas) can also be concisely described
by the logic. This implies a characterization of decidable counting extensions
of XPath queries and XML schemas. Moreover, as the logic is closed under
negation, it can thus be used as an optimal reasoning framework for testing
emptiness, containment and equivalence
Efficient Algorithms for Morphisms over Omega-Regular Languages
Morphisms to finite semigroups can be used for recognizing omega-regular
languages. The so-called strongly recognizing morphisms can be seen as a
deterministic computation model which provides minimal objects (known as the
syntactic morphism) and a trivial complementation procedure. We give a
quadratic-time algorithm for computing the syntactic morphism from any given
strongly recognizing morphism, thereby showing that minimization is easy as
well. In addition, we give algorithms for efficiently solving various decision
problems for weakly recognizing morphisms. Weakly recognizing morphism are
often smaller than their strongly recognizing counterparts. Finally, we
describe the language operations needed for converting formulas in monadic
second-order logic (MSO) into strongly recognizing morphisms, and we give some
experimental results.Comment: Full version of a paper accepted to FSTTCS 201
On the Structure and Complexity of Rational Sets of Regular Languages
In a recent thread of papers, we have introduced FQL, a precise specification
language for test coverage, and developed the test case generation engine
FShell for ANSI C. In essence, an FQL test specification amounts to a set of
regular languages, each of which has to be matched by at least one test
execution. To describe such sets of regular languages, the FQL semantics uses
an automata-theoretic concept known as rational sets of regular languages
(RSRLs). RSRLs are automata whose alphabet consists of regular expressions.
Thus, the language accepted by the automaton is a set of regular expressions.
In this paper, we study RSRLs from a theoretic point of view. More
specifically, we analyze RSRL closure properties under common set theoretic
operations, and the complexity of membership checking, i.e., whether a regular
language is an element of a RSRL. For all questions we investigate both the
general case and the case of finite sets of regular languages. Although a few
properties are left as open problems, the paper provides a systematic semantic
foundation for the test specification language FQL
An Automata Theoretic Approach to the Zero-One Law for Regular Languages: Algorithmic and Logical Aspects
A zero-one language L is a regular language whose asymptotic probability
converges to either zero or one. In this case, we say that L obeys the zero-one
law. We prove that a regular language obeys the zero-one law if and only if its
syntactic monoid has a zero element, by means of Eilenberg's variety theoretic
approach. Our proof gives an effective automata characterisation of the
zero-one law for regular languages, and it leads to a linear time algorithm for
testing whether a given regular language is zero-one. In addition, we discuss
the logical aspects of the zero-one law for regular languages.Comment: In Proceedings GandALF 2015, arXiv:1509.0685
A Characterization for Decidable Separability by Piecewise Testable Languages
The separability problem for word languages of a class by
languages of a class asks, for two given languages and
from , whether there exists a language from that
includes and excludes , that is, and . In this work, we assume some mild closure properties for
and study for which such classes separability by a piecewise
testable language (PTL) is decidable. We characterize these classes in terms of
decidability of (two variants of) an unboundedness problem. From this, we
deduce that separability by PTL is decidable for a number of language classes,
such as the context-free languages and languages of labeled vector addition
systems. Furthermore, it follows that separability by PTL is decidable if and
only if one can compute for any language of the class its downward closure wrt.
the scattered substring ordering (i.e., if the set of scattered substrings of
any language of the class is effectively regular).
The obtained decidability results contrast some undecidability results. In
fact, for all (non-regular) language classes that we present as examples with
decidable separability, it is undecidable whether a given language is a PTL
itself.
Our characterization involves a result of independent interest, which states
that for any kind of languages and , non-separability by PTL is
equivalent to the existence of common patterns in and
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