English

Marking Shortest Paths On Pushdown Graphs Does Not Preserve MSO Decidability

Formal Languages and Automata Theory 2020-10-14 v2

Abstract

In this paper we consider pushdown graphs, i.e. infinite graphs that can be described as transition graphs of deterministic real-time pushdown automata. We consider the case where some vertices are designated as being final and we built, in a breadth-first manner, a marking of edges that lead to such vertices (i.e., for every vertex that can reach a final one, we mark all out-going edges laying on some shortest path to a final vertex). Our main result is that the edge-marked version of a pushdown graph may itself no longer be a pushdown graph, as we prove that this enrich graph may have an undecidable MSO theory. In this paper we consider pushdown graphs, i.e. infinite graphs that can be described as transition graphs of deterministic real-time pushdown automata. We consider the case where some vertices are designated as being final and we build, in a breadth-first manner, a marking of edges that lead to such vertices (i.e., for every vertex that can reach a final one, we mark all out-going edges laying on some shortest path to a final vertex). Our main result is that the edge-marked version of a pushdown graph may itself no longer be a pushdown graph, as we prove that the MSO theory of this enriched graph may be undecidable.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1510.04000,
  title  = {Marking Shortest Paths On Pushdown Graphs Does Not Preserve MSO Decidability},
  author = {Arnaud Carayol and Olivier Serre},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1510.04000},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

11 pages, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T11:19:52.419Z