English

On context-free languages of scattered words

Formal Languages and Automata Theory 2015-03-19 v1 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

It is known that if a B\"uchi context-free language (BCFL) consists of scattered words, then there is an integer nn, depending only on the language, such that the Hausdorff rank of each word in the language is bounded by nn. Every BCFL is a M\"uller context-free language (MCFL). In the first part of the paper, we prove that an MCFL of scattered words is a BCFL iff the rank of every word in the language is bounded by an integer depending only on the language. Then we establish operational characterizations of the BCFLs of well-ordered and scattered words. We prove that a language is a BCFL consisting of well-ordered words iff it can be generated from the singleton languages containing the letters of the alphabet by substitution into ordinary context-free languages and the ω\omega-power operation. We also establish a corresponding result for BCFLs of scattered words and define expressions denoting BCFLs of well-ordered and scattered words. In the final part of the paper we give some applications.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1111.3439,
  title  = {On context-free languages of scattered words},
  author = {Zoltan Esik and Satoshi Okawa},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1111.3439},
  year   = {2015}
}