English

Regular matching problems for infinite trees

Formal Languages and Automata Theory 2023-06-22 v8

Abstract

We study the matching problem of regular tree languages, that is, "σ:σ(L)R\exists \sigma:\sigma(L)\subseteq R?" where L,RL,R are regular tree languages over the union of finite ranked alphabets Σ\Sigma and X\mathcal{X} where X\mathcal{X} is an alphabet of variables and σ\sigma is a substitution such that σ(x)\sigma(x) is a set of trees in T(ΣH)HT(\Sigma\cup H)\setminus H for all xXx\in \mathcal{X}. Here, HH denotes a set of "holes" which are used to define a "sorted" concatenation of trees. Conway studied this problem in the special case for languages of finite words in his classical textbook "Regular algebra and finite machines" published in 1971. He showed that if LL and RR are regular, then the problem "σxX:σ(x)σ(L)R\exists \sigma \forall x\in \mathcal{X}: \sigma(x)\neq \emptyset\wedge \sigma(L)\subseteq R?" is decidable. Moreover, there are only finitely many maximal solutions, the maximal solutions are regular substitutions, and they are effectively computable. We extend Conway's results when L,RL,R are regular languages of finite and infinite trees, and language substitution is applied inside-out, in the sense of Engelfriet and Schmidt (1977/78). More precisely, we show that if LT(ΣX)L\subseteq T(\Sigma\cup\mathcal{X}) and RT(Σ)R\subseteq T(\Sigma) are regular tree languages over finite or infinite trees, then the problem "σxX:σ(x)σio(L)R\exists \sigma \forall x\in \mathcal{X}: \sigma(x)\neq \emptyset\wedge \sigma_{\mathrm{io}}(L)\subseteq R?" is decidable. Here, the subscript "io\mathrm{io}" in σio(L)\sigma_{\mathrm{io}}(L) refers to "inside-out". Moreover, there are only finitely many maximal solutions σ\sigma, the maximal solutions are regular substitutions and effectively computable. The corresponding question for the outside-in extension σoi\sigma_{\mathrm{oi}} remains open, even in the restricted setting of finite trees.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2004.09926,
  title  = {Regular matching problems for infinite trees},
  author = {Carlos Camino and Volker Diekert and Besik Dundua and Mircea Marin and Géraud Sénizergues},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.09926},
  year   = {2023}
}