English

Operator Precedence \omega-languages

Formal Languages and Automata Theory 2013-07-03 v2

Abstract

\omega-languages are becoming more and more relevant nowadays when most applications are 'ever-running'. Recent literature, mainly under the motivation of widening the application of model checking techniques, extended the analysis of these languages from the simple regular ones to various classes of languages with 'visible syntax structure', such as visibly pushdown languages (VPLs). Operator precedence languages (OPLs), instead, were originally defined to support deterministic parsing and, though seemingly unrelated, exhibit interesting relations with these classes of languages: OPLs strictly include VPLs, enjoy all relevant closure properties and have been characterized by a suitable automata family and a logic notation. In this paper we introduce operator precedence \omega-languages (\omega OPLs), investigating various acceptance criteria and their closure properties. Whereas some properties are natural extensions of those holding for regular languages, others required novel investigation techniques. Application-oriented examples show the gain in expressiveness and verifiability offered by \omega OPLs w.r.t. smaller classes.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1301.2476,
  title  = {Operator Precedence \omega-languages},
  author = {Federica Panella and Matteo Pradella and Dino Mandrioli and Violetta Lonati},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1301.2476},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

38 pages. Added new proofs regarding the relationships among classes of Operator precedence \omega-languages and their closure properties

R2 v1 2026-06-21T23:07:51.653Z