English

The computational complexity of universality problems for prefixes, suffixes, factors, and subwords of regular languages

Formal Languages and Automata Theory 2009-07-03 v3 Computational Complexity

Abstract

In this paper we consider the computational complexity of the following problems: given a DFA or NFA representing a regular language L over a finite alphabet Sigma is the set of all prefixes (resp., suffixes, factors, subwords) of all words of L equal to Sigma*? In the case of testing universality for factors of languages represented by DFA's, we find an interesting connection to Cerny's conjecture on synchronizing words.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0907.0159,
  title  = {The computational complexity of universality problems for prefixes, suffixes, factors, and subwords of regular languages},
  author = {N. Rampersad and J. Shallit and Z. Xu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0907.0159},
  year   = {2009}
}