Set Automata

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (02) ◽  
pp. 187-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Kutrib ◽  
Andreas Malcher ◽  
Matthias Wendlandt

We consider the model of deterministic set automata which are basically deterministic finite automata equipped with a set as an additional storage medium. The basic operations on the set are the insertion of elements, the removing of elements, and the test whether an element is in the set. We investigate the computational power of deterministic set automata and compare the language class accepted with the context-free languages and classes of languages accepted by queue automata. As result the incomparability to all classes considered is obtained. Furthermore, we examine the closure properties under several operations. Then we show that deterministic set automata may be an interesting model from a practical point of view by proving that their regularity problem as well as the problems of emptiness, finiteness, infiniteness, and universality are decidable. Finally, the descriptional complexity of deterministic and nondeterministic set automata is investigated. A conversion procedure that turns a deterministic set automaton accepting a regular language into a deterministic finite automaton is developed which leads to a double exponential upper bound. This bound is proved to be tight in the order of magnitude by presenting also a double exponential lower bound. In contrast to these recursive bounds we obtain non-recursive trade-offs when nondeterministic set automata are considered.

2009 ◽  
Vol 20 (04) ◽  
pp. 629-645 ◽  
Author(s):  
GIOVANNI PIGHIZZINI

The simulation of deterministic pushdown automata defined over a one-letter alphabet by finite state automata is investigated from a descriptional complexity point of view. We show that each unary deterministic pushdown automaton of size s can be simulated by a deterministic finite automaton with a number of states that is exponential in s. We prove that this simulation is tight. Furthermore, its cost cannot be reduced even if it is performed by a two-way nondeterministic automaton. We also prove that there are unary languages for which deterministic pushdown automata cannot be exponentially more succinct than finite automata. In order to state this result, we investigate the conversion of deterministic pushdown automata into context-free grammars. We prove that in the unary case the number of variables in the resulting grammar is strictly smaller than the number of variables needed in the case of nonunary alphabets.


2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (07) ◽  
pp. 897-916 ◽  
Author(s):  
GIOVANNI PIGHIZZINI ◽  
ANDREA PISONI

Limited automata are one-tape Turing machines that are allowed to rewrite the content of any tape cell only in the first d visits, for a fixed constant d. In the case d = 1, namely, when a rewriting is possible only during the first visit to a cell, these models have the same power of finite state automata. We prove state upper and lower bounds for the conversion of 1-limited automata into finite state automata. In particular, we prove a double exponential state gap between nondeterministic 1-limited automata and one-way deterministic finite automata. The gap reduces to a single exponential in the case of deterministic 1-limited automata. This also implies an exponential state gap between nondeterministic and deterministic 1-limited automata. Another consequence is that 1-limited automata can have less states than equivalent two-way nondeterministic finite automata. We show that this is true even if we restrict to the case of the one-letter input alphabet. For each d ≥ 2, d-limited automata are known to characterize the class of context-free languages. Using the Chomsky-Schützenberger representation for contextfree languages, we present a new conversion from context-free languages into 2-limited automata.


2010 ◽  
Vol DMTCS Proceedings vol. AL,... (Proceedings) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Kutrib ◽  
Jonas Lefèvre ◽  
Andreas Malcher

International audience We investigate the descriptional complexity of basic operations on real-time one-way cellular automata with an unbounded as well well as a fixed number of cells. The size of the automata is measured by their number of states. Most of the bounds shown are tight in the order of magnitude, that is, the sizes resulting from the effective constructions given are optimal with respect to worst case complexity. Conversely, these bounds also show the maximal savings of size that can be achieved when a given minimal real-time OCA is decomposed into smaller ones with respect to a given operation. From this point of view the natural problem of whether a decomposition can algorithmically be solved is studied. It turns out that all decomposition problems considered are algorithmically unsolvable. Therefore, a very restricted cellular model is studied in the second part of the paper, namely, real-time one-way cellular automata with a fixed number of cells. These devices are known to capture the regular languages and, thus, all the problems being undecidable for general one-way cellular automata become decidable. It is shown that these decision problems are $\textsf{NLOGSPACE}$-complete and thus share the attractive computational complexity of deterministic finite automata. Furthermore, the state complexity of basic operations for these devices is studied and upper and lower bounds are given.


Author(s):  
Holger Bock Axelsen ◽  
Martin Kutrib ◽  
Andreas Malcher ◽  
Matthias Wendlandt

It is well known that reversible finite automata do not accept all regular languages, that reversible pushdown automata do not accept all deterministic context-free languages, and that reversible queue automata are less powerful than deterministic real-time queue automata. It is of significant interest from both a practical and theoretical point of view to close these gaps. We here extend these reversible models by a preprocessing unit which is basically a reversible injective and length-preserving finite state transducer. It turns out that preprocessing the input using such weak devices increases the computational power of reversible deterministic finite automata to the acceptance of all regular languages, whereas for reversible pushdown automata the accepted family of languages lies strictly in between the reversible deterministic context-free languages and the real-time deterministic context-free languages. For reversible queue automata the preprocessing of the input leads to machines that are stronger than real-time reversible queue automata, but less powerful than real-time deterministic (irreversible) queue automata. Moreover, it is shown that the computational power of all three types of machines is not changed by allowing the preprocessing finite state transducer to work irreversibly. Finally, we examine the closure properties of the family of languages accepted by such machines.


2021 ◽  
Vol 180 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Henning Fernau ◽  
Martin Kutrib ◽  
Matthias Wendlandt

We study the computational and descriptional complexity of self-verifying pushdown automata (SVPDA) and self-verifying realtime queue automata (SVRQA). A self-verifying automaton is a nondeterministic device whose nondeterminism is symmetric in the following sense. Each computation path can give one of the answers yes, no, or do not know. For every input word, at least one computation path must give either the answer yes or no, and the answers given must not be contradictory. We show that SVPDA and SVRQA are automata characterizations of so-called complementation kernels, that is, context-free or realtime nondeterministic queue automaton languages whose complement is also context free or accepted by a realtime nondeterministic queue automaton. So, the families of languages accepted by SVPDA and SVRQA are strictly between the families of deterministic and nondeterministic languages. Closure properties and various decidability problems are considered. For example, it is shown that it is not semidecidable whether a given SVPDA or SVRQA can be made self-verifying. Moreover, we study descriptional complexity aspects of these machines. It turns out that the size trade-offs between nondeterministic and self-verifying as well as between self-verifying and deterministic automata are non-recursive. That is, one can choose an arbitrarily large recursive function f, but the gain in economy of description eventually exceeds f when changing from the former system to the latter.


Author(s):  
Bruno Guillon ◽  
Giovanni Pighizzini ◽  
Luca Prigioniero

Non-self-embedding grammars are a restriction of context-free grammars which does not allow to describe recursive structures and, hence, which characterizes only the class of regular languages. A double exponential gap in size from non-self-embedding grammars to deterministic finite automata is known. The same size gap is also known from constant-height pushdown automata and [Formula: see text]-limited automata to deterministic finite automata. Constant-height pushdown automata and [Formula: see text]-limited automata are compared with non-self-embedding grammars. It is proved that non-self-embedding grammars and constant-height pushdown automata are polynomially related in size. Furthermore, a polynomial size simulation by [Formula: see text]-limited automata is presented. However, the converse transformation is proved to cost exponential. Finally, a different simulation shows that also the conversion of deterministic constant-height pushdown automata into deterministic [Formula: see text]-limited automata costs polynomial.


Author(s):  
Benedek Nagy

Union-free expressions are regular expressions without using the union operation. Consequently, (nondeterministic) union-free languages are described by regular expressions using only concatenation and Kleene star. The language class is also characterised by a special class of finite automata: 1CFPAs have exactly one cycle-free accepting path from each of their states. Obviously such an automaton has exactly one accepting state. The deterministic counterpart of such class of automata defines the deterministic union-free (d-union-free, for short) languages. In this paper [Formula: see text]-free nondeterministic variants of 1CFPAs are used to define n-union-free languages. The defined language class is shown to be properly between the classes of (nondeterministic) union-free and d-union-free languages (in case of at least binary alphabet). In case of unary alphabet the class of n-union-free languages coincides with the class of union-free languages. Some properties of the new subregular class of languages are discussed, e.g., closure properties. On the other hand, a regular expression is in union normal form if it is a finite union of union-free expressions. It is well known that every regular expression can be written in union normal form, i.e., all regular languages can be described as finite unions of (nondeterministic) union-free languages. It is also known that the same fact does not hold for deterministic union-free languages, that is, there are regular languages that cannot be written as finite unions of d-union-free languages. As an important result here we show that every regular language can be defined by a finite union of n-union-free languages. This fact also allows to define n-union-complexity of regular languages.


1978 ◽  
Vol 7 (84) ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Meineche Schmidt

<p>This thesis analyzes the descriptional power of finite automata, regular expressions, pushdown automata, and certain generalized models of macro grammars. For finite automata and pushdown automata the emphasis is on ambiguity. It is shown that ambiguous nondeterminism allows more succinct definitions than unambiguous nondeterminism which in turn allows more succinct definitions than determinism. The succinctness gain is nonrecursive for pda's and nonpolynomial for finite automata.</p><p>The succinctness of regular expressions and macro grammars is measured in terms of complexity theory. It is shown that the inequivalence problem for Ol macro grammars generating finite languages is hard for nondeterministic double exponential time, and that the ''nonemptiness of complement'' problem for unambiguous regular expressions is in NP. This implies that unambiguous regular expressions are ''easier'' than general regular expressions (unless NP is equal to PSPACE).</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (06n07) ◽  
pp. 1069-1089
Author(s):  
Markus Holzer ◽  
Martin Kutrib

We introduce the concept of one-time nondeterminism as a new kind of limited nondeterminism for finite state machines and pushdown automata. Roughly speaking, one-time nondeterminism means that at the outset the computation is nondeterministic, but whenever it performs a guess, this guess is fixed for the rest of the computation. We characterize the computational power of one-time nondeterministic finite automata (OTNFAs) and one-time nondeterministic pushdown devices. Moreover, we study the descriptional complexity of these machines. For instance, we show that for an [Formula: see text]-state OTNFA with a sole nondeterministic state, that is nondeterministic for only one input symbol, [Formula: see text] states are sufficient and necessary in the worst case for an equivalent deterministic finite automaton. In case of pushdown automata, the conversion of a nondeterministic to a one-time nondeterministic as well as the conversion of a one-time nondeterministic to a deterministic one turn out to be non-recursive, that is, the trade-offs in size cannot be bounded by any recursive function.


2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (2-3-4) ◽  
pp. 185-199
Author(s):  
Radim Kocman ◽  
Zbyněk Křivka ◽  
Alexander Meduna

The present paper modifies and studies jumping finite automata so they always perform two simultaneous jumps according to the same rule. For either of the two simultaneous jumps, it considers three natural directions – (1) to the left, (2) to the right, and (3) in either direction. According to this jumping-direction three-part classification, the paper investigates the mutual relation between the language families resulting from jumping finite automata performing the jumps in these ways and the families of regular, linear, context-free, and context-sensitive languages. It demonstrates that most of these language families are pairwise incomparable. In addition, many closure and non-closure properties of the resulting language families are established.


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