In this paper we examine decision problems associated with various classes of
convex languages, studied by Ang and Brzozowski (under the name "continuous
languages"). We show that we can decide whether a given language L is prefix-,
suffix-, factor-, or subword-convex in polynomial time if L is represented by a
DFA, but that the problem is PSPACE-hard if L is represented by an NFA. In the
case that a regular language is not convex, we prove tight upper bounds on the
length of the shortest words demonstrating this fact, in terms of the number of
states of an accepting DFA. Similar results are proved for some subclasses of
convex languages: the prefix-, suffix-, factor-, and subword-closed languages,
and the prefix-, suffix-, factor-, and subword-free languages.Comment: preliminary version. This version corrected one typo in Section
2.1.1, line