Related papers: Efficient Separability of Regular Languages by Sub…
A regular tree language L is locally testable if membership of a tree in L depends only on the presence or absence of some fix set of neighborhoods in the tree. In this paper we show that it is decidable whether a regular tree language is…
The downward closure of a language is the set of all (not necessarily contiguous) subwords of its members. It is well-known that the downward closure of every language is regular. Moreover, recent results show that downward closures are…
A prefix code L satisfies the condition that no word of L is a proper prefix of another word of L. Recently, Ko, Han and Salomaa relaxed this condition by allowing a word of L to be a proper prefix of at most k words of L, for some `margin'…
We show that for any $i > 0$, it is decidable, given a regular language, whether it is expressible in the $\Sigma_i[<]$ fragment of first-order logic FO[<]. This settles a question open since 1971. Our main technical result relies on the…
We examine deterministic and nondeterministic state complexities of regular operations on prefix-free languages. We strengthen several results by providing witness languages over smaller alphabets, usually as small as possible. We next…
The height of a piecewise-testable language $L$ is the maximum length of the words needed to define $L$ by excluding and requiring given subwords. The height of $L$ is an important descriptive complexity measure that has not yet been…
A regular language is $k$-piecewise testable if it is a finite boolean combination of languages of the form $\Sigma^* a_1 \Sigma^* \cdots \Sigma^* a_n \Sigma^*$, where $a_i\in\Sigma$ and $0\le n \le k$. Given a DFA $A$ and $k\ge 0$, it is…
Two languages are separable by a piecewise testable language if and only if there exists no infinite tower between them. An infinite tower is an infinite sequence of strings alternating between the two languages such that every string is a…
The downward and upward closures of a regular language $L$ are obtained by collecting all the subwords and superwords of its elements, respectively. The downward and upward interiors of $L$ are obtained dually by collecting words having all…
We show that the shuffle $L \unicode{x29E2} F$ of a piecewise-testable language $L$ and a finite language $F$ is piecewise-testable. The proof relies on a classic but little-used automata-theoretic characterization of piecewise-testable…
The separating words problem asks for the size of the smallest DFA needed to distinguish between two words of length <= n (by accepting one and rejecting the other). In this paper we survey what is known and unknown about the problem,…
We investigate the properties of formal languages expressible in terms of formulas over quantifier-free theories of word equations, arithmetic over length constraints, and language membership predicates for the classes of regular, visibly…
A language $L$ over an alphabet $\Sigma$ is suffix-convex if, for any words $x,y,z\in\Sigma^*$, whenever $z$ and $xyz$ are in $L$, then so is $yz$. Suffix-convex languages include three special cases: left-ideal, suffix-closed, and…
The past research on the state complexity of operations on regular languages is examined, and a new approach based on an old method (derivatives of regular expressions) is presented. Since state complexity is a property of a language, it is…
Let $\Sigma = X\cup X^{-1} = \{ x_1 ,x_2 ,..., x_m ,x_1^{-1} ,x_2^{-1} ,..., x_m^{-1} \}$ and let $G$ be a group with set of generators $\Sigma$. Let $\mathfrak{L} (G) =\left\{ \left. \omega \in \Sigma^* \; \right\vert \;\omega \equiv e \;…
Given a regular language $L$, we study the language of words $\mathsf{D}(L)$, that distinguish between pairs of different left-quotients of $L$. We characterize this distinguishability operation, show that its iteration has always a fixed…
For a non-negative integer $k$, a language is $k$-piecewise test\-able ($k$-PT) if it is a finite boolean combination of languages of the form $\Sigma^* a_1 \Sigma^* \cdots \Sigma^* a_n \Sigma^*$ for $a_i\in\Sigma$ and $0\le n \le k$. We…
We continue our study of open and closed languages. We investigate how the properties of being open and closed are preserved under concatenation. We investigate analogues, in formal languages, of the separation axioms in topological spaces;…
Given a formal language L specified in various ways, we consider the problem of determining if L is nonempty. If L is indeed nonempty, we find upper and lower bounds on the length of the shortest string in L.
A language $L$ over an alphabet $\Sigma$ is prefix-convex if, for any words $x,y,z\in\Sigma^*$, whenever $x$ and $xyz$ are in $L$, then so is $xy$. Prefix-convex languages include right-ideal, prefix-closed, and prefix-free languages. We…