English

Unrestricted State Complexity of Binary Operations on Regular Languages

Formal Languages and Automata Theory 2016-06-14 v3

Abstract

I study the state complexity of binary operations on regular languages over different alphabets. It is well known that if LmL'_m and LnL_n are languages restricted to be over the same alphabet, with mm and nn quotients, respectively, the state complexity of any binary boolean operation on LmL'_m and LnL_n is mnmn, and that of the product (concatenation) is (m1)2n+2n1(m-1)2^n +2^{n-1}. In contrast to this, I show that if LmL'_m and LnL_n are over their own different alphabets, the state complexity of union and symmetric difference is mn+m+n+1mn+m+n+1, that of intersection is mnmn, that of difference is mn+mmn+m, and that of the product is m2n+2n1m2^n+2^{n-1}.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1602.01387,
  title  = {Unrestricted State Complexity of Binary Operations on Regular Languages},
  author = {Janusz Brzozowski},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1602.01387},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

13 pages, 6 figures. An earlier version is to appear in the proceedings of DCFS 2016. Two errors are corrected in the present arXiv version

R2 v1 2026-06-22T12:42:58.438Z