167 research outputs found
Monoid automata for displacement context-free languages
In 2007 Kambites presented an algebraic interpretation of
Chomsky-Schutzenberger theorem for context-free languages. We give an
interpretation of the corresponding theorem for the class of displacement
context-free languages which are equivalent to well-nested multiple
context-free languages. We also obtain a characterization of k-displacement
context-free languages in terms of monoid automata and show how such automata
can be simulated on two stacks. We introduce the simultaneous two-stack
automata and compare different variants of its definition. All the definitions
considered are shown to be equivalent basing on the geometric interpretation of
memory operations of these automata.Comment: Revised version for ESSLLI Student Session 2013 selected paper
Regular Separability and Intersection Emptiness Are Independent Problems
The problem of regular separability asks, given two languages K and L, whether there exists a regular language S that includes K and is disjoint from L. This problem becomes interesting when the input languages K and L are drawn from language classes beyond the regular languages. For such classes, a mild and useful assumption is that they are full trios, i.e. closed under rational transductions.
All the results on regular separability for full trios obtained so far exhibited a noteworthy correspondence with the intersection emptiness problem: In each case, regular separability is decidable if and only if intersection emptiness is decidable. This raises the question whether for full trios, regular separability can be reduced to intersection emptiness or vice-versa.
We present counterexamples showing that neither of the two problems can be reduced to the other. More specifically, we describe full trios C_1, D_1, C_2, D_2 such that (i) intersection emptiness is decidable for C_1 and D_1, but regular separability is undecidable for C_1 and D_1 and (ii) regular separability is decidable for C_2 and D_2, but intersection emptiness is undecidable for C_2 and D_2
Generators and Bases for Monadic Closures
It is well-known that every regular language admits a unique minimal deterministic acceptor. Establishing an analogous result for non-deterministic acceptors is significantly more difficult, but nonetheless of great practical importance. To tackle this issue, a number of sub-classes of nondeterministic automata have been identified, all admitting canonical minimal representatives. In previous work, we have shown that such representatives can be recovered categorically in two steps. First, one constructs the minimal bialgebra accepting a given regular language, by closing the minimal coalgebra with additional algebraic structure over a monad. Second, one identifies canonical generators for the algebraic part of the bialgebra, to derive an equivalent coalgebra with side effects in a monad. In this paper, we further develop the general theory underlying these two steps. On the one hand, we show that deriving a minimal bialgebra from a minimal coalgebra can be realized by applying a monad on an appropriate category of subobjects. On the other hand, we explore the abstract theory of generators and bases for algebras over a monad
Scope-Bounded Reachability in Valence Systems
Multi-pushdown systems are a standard model for concurrent recursive programs, but they have an undecidable reachability problem. Therefore, there have been several proposals to underapproximate their sets of runs so that reachability in this underapproximation becomes decidable. One such underapproximation that covers a relatively high portion of runs is scope boundedness. In such a run, after each push to stack i, the corresponding pop operation must come within a bounded number of visits to stack i.
In this work, we generalize this approach to a large class of infinite-state systems. For this, we consider the model of valence systems, which consist of a finite-state control and an infinite-state storage mechanism that is specified by a finite undirected graph. This framework captures pushdowns, vector addition systems, integer vector addition systems, and combinations thereof. For this framework, we propose a notion of scope boundedness that coincides with the classical notion when the storage mechanism happens to be a multi-pushdown.
We show that with this notion, reachability can be decided in PSPACE for every storage mechanism in the framework. Moreover, we describe the full complexity landscape of this problem across all storage mechanisms, both in the case of (i) the scope bound being given as input and (ii) for fixed scope bounds. Finally, we provide an almost complete description of the complexity landscape if even a description of the storage mechanism is part of the input
General Decidability Results for Asynchronous Shared-Memory Programs: Higher-Order and Beyond
The model of asynchronous programming arises in many contexts, from low-level
systems software to high-level web programming. We take a language-theoretic
perspective and show general decidability and undecidability results for
asynchronous programs that capture all known results as well as show
decidability of new and important classes. As a main consequence, we show
decidability of safety, termination and boundedness verification for
higher-order asynchronous programs -- such as OCaml programs using Lwt -- and
undecidability of liveness verification already for order-2 asynchronous
programs. We show that under mild assumptions, surprisingly, safety and
termination verification of asynchronous programs with handlers from a language
class are decidable iff emptiness is decidable for the underlying language
class. Moreover, we show that configuration reachability and liveness (fair
termination) verification are equivalent, and decidability of these problems
implies decidability of the well-known "equal-letters" problem on languages.
Our results close the decidability frontier for asynchronous programs
The Complexity of Bounded Context Switching with Dynamic Thread Creation
Dynamic networks of concurrent pushdown systems (DCPS) are a theoretical
model for multi-threaded recursive programs with shared global state and
dynamical creation of threads. The (global) state reachability problem for DCPS
is undecidable in general, but Atig et al. (2009) showed that it becomes
decidable, and is in 2EXPSPACE, when each thread is restricted to a fixed
number of context switches. The best known lower bound for the problem is
EXPSPACE-hard and this lower bound follows already when each thread is a
finite-state machine and runs atomically to completion (i.e., does not switch
contexts). In this paper, we close the gap by showing that state reachability
is 2EXPSPACE-hard already with only one context switch. Interestingly, state
reachability analysis is in EXPSPACE both for pushdown threads without context
switches as well as for finite-state threads with arbitrary context switches.
Thus, recursive threads together with a single context switch provide an
exponential advantage.
Our proof techniques are of independent interest for 2EXPSPACE-hardness
results. We introduce transducer-defined Petri nets, a succinct representation
for Petri nets, and show coverability is 2EXPSPACE-hard for this model. To show
2EXPSPACE-hardness, we present a modified version of Lipton's simulation of
counter machines by Petri nets, where the net programs can make explicit
recursive procedure calls up to a bounded depth
Canonical Automata via Distributive Law Homomorphisms
The classical powerset construction is a standard method converting a non-deterministic automaton into a deterministic one recognising the same language. Recently, the powerset construction has been lifted to a more general framework that converts an automaton with side-effects, given by a monad, into a deterministic automaton accepting the same language. The resulting automaton has additional algebraic properties, both in the state space and transition structure, inherited from the monad. In this paper, we study the reverse construction and present a framework in which a deterministic automaton with additional algebraic structure over a given monad can be converted into an equivalent succinct automaton with side-effects. Apart from recovering examples from the literature, such as the canonical residual finite-state automaton and the átomaton, we discover a new canonical automaton for a regular language by relating the free vector space monad over the two element field to the neighbourhood monad. Finally, we show that every regular language satisfying a suitable property parametric in two monads admits a size-minimal succinct acceptor
Existential Definability over the Subword Ordering
We study first-order logic (FO) over the structure consisting of finite words
over some alphabet , together with the (non-contiguous) subword ordering. In
terms of decidability of quantifier alternation fragments, this logic is
well-understood: If every word is available as a constant, then even the
(i.e., existential) fragment is undecidable, already for binary
alphabets . However, up to now, little is known about the expressiveness of
the quantifier alternation fragments: For example, the undecidability proof for
the existential fragment relies on Diophantine equations and only shows that
recursively enumerable languages over a singleton alphabet (and some auxiliary
predicates) are definable. We show that if , then a relation is
definable in the existential fragment over with constants if and only if it
is recursively enumerable. This implies characterizations for all fragments
: If , then a relation is definable in if and
only if it belongs to the -th level of the arithmetical hierarchy. In
addition, our result yields an analogous complete description of the
-fragments for of the pure logic, where the words of
are not available as constants
Existential Definability over the Subword Ordering
We study first-order logic (FO) over the structure consisting of finite words over some alphabet A, together with the (non-contiguous) subword ordering. In terms of decidability of quantifier alternation fragments, this logic is well-understood: If every word is available as a constant, then even the ?? (i.e., existential) fragment is undecidable, already for binary alphabets A.
However, up to now, little is known about the expressiveness of the quantifier alternation fragments: For example, the undecidability proof for the existential fragment relies on Diophantine equations and only shows that recursively enumerable languages over a singleton alphabet (and some auxiliary predicates) are definable.
We show that if |A| ? 3, then a relation is definable in the existential fragment over A with constants if and only if it is recursively enumerable. This implies characterizations for all fragments ?_i: If |A| ? 3, then a relation is definable in ?_i if and only if it belongs to the i-th level of the arithmetical hierarchy. In addition, our result yields an analogous complete description of the ?_i-fragments for i ? 2 of the pure logic, where the words of A^* are not available as constants
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