English

Closures in Formal Languages and Kuratowski's Theorem

Computational Complexity 2009-04-15 v1 Formal Languages and Automata Theory

Abstract

A famous theorem of Kuratowski states that in a topological space, at most 14 distinct sets can be produced by repeatedly applying the operations of closure and complement to a given set. We re-examine this theorem in the setting of formal languages, where closure is either Kleene closure or positive closure. We classify languages according to the structure of the algebra they generate under iterations of complement and closure. We show that there are precisely 9 such algebras in the case of positive closure, and 12 in the case of Kleene closure.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0901.3761,
  title  = {Closures in Formal Languages and Kuratowski's Theorem},
  author = {J. Brzozowski and E. Grant and J. Shallit},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0901.3761},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

submitted to DLT 2009

R2 v1 2026-06-21T12:04:09.872Z