The vertices of a finite state system are usually a subset of the natural
numbers. Most algorithms relative to these systems only use this fact to select
vertices.
For infinite state systems, however, the situation is different: in
particular, for such systems having a finite description, each state of the
system is a configuration of some machine. Then most algorithmic approaches
rely on the structure of these configurations. Such characterisations are said
internal. In order to apply algorithms detecting a structural property (like
identifying connected components) one may have first to transform the system in
order to fit the description needed for the algorithm. The problem of internal
characterisation is that it hides structural properties, and each solution
becomes ad hoc relatively to the form of the configurations.
On the contrary, external characterisations avoid explicit naming of the
vertices. Such characterisation are mostly defined via graph transformations.
In this paper we present two kind of external characterisations:
deterministic graph rewriting, which in turn characterise regular graphs,
deterministic context-free languages, and rational graphs. Inverse substitution
from a generator (like the complete binary tree) provides characterisation for
prefix-recognizable graphs, the Caucal Hierarchy and rational graphs. We
illustrate how these characterisation provide an efficient tool for the
representation of infinite state systems