# Questions tagged [automata-theory]

Automata Theory, including abstract machines, grammars, parsing, grammatical inference, transducers, and finite-state techniques

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### Determining if transducer automaton is non-minimal without minimizing?

I work (in implementation!) with deterministic finite state automata with input and output; i.e. there are transitions (start state,input letter)$\to$(new state,output letter). Thus every state gives ...
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### Weakest model of computation that can typecheck?

What's the weakest (known) model of computation (or smallest language class) that can decide whether a simply-typed lambda calculus program type checks? What about an (explicitly typed) CoC program?
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### 2DFA to 1DFA - Converting two way deterministic finite automata to one way deterministic finite automata

How can I convert a 2DFA to a normal DFA. Is there an algorithm/elegant way to do that ? I've been researching this for a few days but I coundn't find anything. Actually I want to implement that in ...
153 views

### Is there any equation-based method for transforming Büchi-automata to omega-regular language?

I know there exists an equation-based method for transforming finite automata into regular language (or `regular expression'). The main idea is as follows. First we construct a set of equations ...
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### Languages whose Parikh image is recognizable

Let $\Sigma$ be some alphabet, and $p : \Sigma^* \to \mathbb N_0^{|\Sigma|}$ the Parikh map. A formal language $L \subseteq \Sigma^*$ is called a slip-language, if $p(L)$ is a semilinear set. By ...
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### Incremental PDA emptiness testing?

Is there anything known about the problem of incremental emptiness testing for a pushdown automata? Suppose you have a PDA with (up to) $n$ states and transitions, but instead of being given the ...
83 views

### What is the minimal class of subshifts for which conjugacy is known to be undecidable?

The question of whether two finite one directional shifts are conjugates is known to be decidable. The same question for sofic shifts is famously open. I have seen that some works manage to prove ...
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### Proof: Why are MM-1QFA strictly more powerful than MO-1QFA? // Quantum automata

While dealing with quantum finite automata (QFA), I repeatedly come across the statement that measure-many QFA (MM-1QFA, KW97) are strictly more powerful than measure-once QFA (MO-1QFA, MC97). More ...
381 views

### NP-complete decision problems on deterministic automata

Do you know any NP-complete decision problems on deterministic automata? Most NP-complete problems that come to my mind are either (see, or here) graph theoretical, or involve some string rewriting or ...
51 views

### Palindrome language and Finite Automata Machines [closed]

I'm a grad student in math. I'm unaware of available literature in theoretical computer science, so require suggestions for books. Here are the two topics I'm interested in exploring. 1) A complete ...
156 views

### Containment problem of an acyclic NFA in an NFA

Let $A$ and $B$ be NFAs, such that $A$ is acyclic. In the general case, deciding whether $L(A)\subseteq L(B)$ is $PSPACE$-hard. However, since $A$ is acyclic, we know that for every $w \in L(A)$, it ...
403 views

### Maximum shortest word accepted by pushdown automata

Given a fixed alphabet, consider all deterministic pushdown automata with $n$ states that accept a nonempty language. What is the maximum length of the shortest word accepted by a deterministic ...
453 views

### Constraints on sliding windows

Let $L\subseteq \Sigma^*$ be a language of finite words and $n>0$ some integer. I would like to know if anything is known on the time and space complexity with respect to $n$ to check for ...
202 views

### Are endmarkers necessary for Deterministic Pushdown Automata?

In the book by Kozen (Automata and Computability), the transition function of deterministic pushdown automata (DPDAs) is supposed, in contrast with non-deterministic pushdown automata (NPDAs), to ...
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### Information theory for Mathematical Physics [duplicate]

What are some good introductory texts on information theory for someone who is classically trained in mathematical physics? Unfortunately my abilities in computer sciences and formal logic are next ...
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### What class of languages is recognized by finite-state automata with $k$ heads?

A DFA or NFA reads through an input string with a single head, moving left-to-right. It seems natural to wonder about finite-state machines that have multiple heads, each of which moves through the ...
49 views

### Translation from LTL with Past to LTL

Has it been charaterized the cost of the translation from LTL with Past to LTL? In [Gab89] this translation is assumed to be non elementary and in "Temporal Logic with Past is Exponentially More ...
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### Can we have more than one Deterministic Finite Automata diagrams for a set of strings? [closed]

Much like many math equations can be simplified. I am wondering if Deterministic Finite Automata diagrams can equal each other while some may be more simplified than others. I am following the youtube ...
126 views

### Are PDAs without ϵ moves and with bounded stack operation as powerful as PDAs with them?

It is known that PDAs without $\epsilon$ moves are as powerful as PDAs with them. However, it seems to me that the proof allows several stack operations in one move. What happens if we allow at most ...
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### Deterministic Realtime Languages

Book and Greibach (V. Book, Ronald & A. Greibach, Sheila. (1970). Quasi-realtime languages. Theory of Computing Systems. 4. 97-111. 10.1007/BF01705890.) prove that non-deterministic linear time ...
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### Language recongized by a “quasi realtime register machine”?

Counter machines are very powerful. Even two counters suffice for making these Turing complete. But, in simulating a Turing machine the counter machine encodes in its integers a large amount of data. ...
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### DPDA with parameterized states

I'm considering an extension of Sublime Text's syntax definition format. A syntax definition is, in essence, a specification of a deterministic pushdown automaton. I would like to extend the system to ...
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### What is the formal definition of a stacked based finite state machine?

The formal definition of a finite state machine is as follows: A FSM is a quintuple: ($I$, $S$, $S$0, $T$, $F$) $I$ - finite, non-empty input set $S$ - finite, non-empty state set $S$0 - initial state ...
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### Intersection of two deterministic parity automata

Given two deterministic parity automata $A_1=(Q_1,\Sigma,\delta,q_{01},c_1)$ and $A_2=(Q_2,\Sigma,\delta,q_{02},c_2)$ with the finite set of states $Q_i$, the finite alphabet $\Sigma_i$, the ...
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### Agnostic query learning for DFAs

Angluin's membership+equivalence query algorithm allows to efficiently and exactly learn a target $n$-state DFA. But what if the target DFA is huge, or the target concept is not even a regular ...
169 views

### Complexity of DFA intersection in this specific case?

In general, the size of the DFA that recognizes the intersection of $n$ languages is exponential in $n$. However, in my case I am computing the intersection of a very restricted subset of possible ...
199 views

### Where does a C-like language without heaps belong in the automata hierarchy?

Assume that the language C', unlike C, has well-defined semantics, but has similar features: pointers and manual memory management through malloc and free. Assume that C'' is the same as C' without ...
101 views

### Notion of “quotient” or “inverse” for recognizable tree languages?

Related to my previous question but this time I have a better idea of what I'm actually asking. I'm looking at the following operation on recognizable tree languages (i.e. regular tree grammars, ...
54 views

### Regular Tree Languages are closed under quotient?

The Wikipedia page for Regular Tree Grammars notes that if $L_1$ and $L_2$ are regular tree languages, than $L_1 \setminus L_2$ is as well. However, it doesn't define this quotient operation for trees,...
260 views

### Turing Machines as Coalgebras

I'm looking to write a survey on the method of representing the dynamics of state-based computation within the framework of coalgebras. So far I've managed to find papers on coalgebra representations ...
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### A conjecture related to the Cerny conjecture - counterexample/reference request

The Cerny conjecture is the statement that any synchronizing automaton with $n$ states has a synchronizing word of length at most $(n-1)^2$. The best current upper bound for the length of a ...
163 views

### Compactness of domino tilings

I've read in Lemma 2 of the paper 1 that if every square region of the plane admits a tiling, then the whole plain admits a tiling, but the proof is omitted. This sounds like a compactness property, ...
239 views

### Name for a special family of languages?

I was wondering whether there is a standard name in the literature for the following family $\mathcal{F}$ of languages over any finite alphabet $\Sigma = \{a_1,\ldots,a_k\}$: $\mathcal{F}$ consists ...
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### Automata as term rewriting systems

It came to my mind that automata (say to start DFA) can be thought as a special kind of rewriting systems. So if one has a word w , one tries to reduce it to the $\epsilon$ word. In other words ...
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### Continuous mathematics and formal language theory

Whether there are some results on solving formal languages problems using mathematical analysis, continuous mathematics. For example, solving the intersection non-emptiness problem for a context-free ...
384 views

### Does a given regular language contain an infinite prefix-free subset?

A set of words over a finite alphabet is prefix-free if there are no two distinct words where one is a prefix of the other. The question is: What is the complexity of checking whether a regular ...
115 views

### Applications of Christol theorem

I'm looking forward to know about applications of Christol theorem mentioned in Jefrrey Shallit's Number theory and formal languages. One of them is purely algebraic: if $f, g \in \mathbb{F}_q[[z]]$ ...
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### Are there cascade decompositions of machines that are more general than finite automata?

The idea of decomposing automata and their associated semi-groups into irreducible sub-components is due to Krohn & Rhodes and has been explored relatively thoroughly. Krohn & Rhodes gave an ...
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### Are all turing machines paths predictable?

I was recently studying partial solutions to the halting problem and came across the problem which I discuss below. In particular I was studying when it was computable to tell if a turing machine has ...
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### Question About Turing Machine Computability [closed]

If p is a Turing machine then L(p) = {x | p(x) = yes}. Let A = {p | p is a Turing machine and L(p) is a finite set}. Is A computable? Justify your answer. So I'm trying to figure out how to solve ...
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### Example of monoid $M$ such that $\operatorname{RAT}(M) \not\subseteq \operatorname{REC}(M)$

Let $M$ be a monoid, the family of rational sets $\operatorname{RAT}(M)$ is defined as the smallest set containing the finite subsets, and closed under union, concatentaion and the star operation. The ...
Let $A$ be a finite alphabet. For a given language $L \subseteq A^{\ast}$ the syntactic monoid $M(L)$ is a well-known notion in formal language theory. Furthermore, a monoid $M$ recognizes a language \$...