Related papers: Distinguishability Operations and Closures on Regu…
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…
We study various complexity properties of suffix-free regular languages. The quotient complexity of a regular language $L$ is the number of left quotients of $L$; this is the same as the state complexity of $L$. A regular language $L'$ is a…
The quotient complexity, also known as state complexity, of a regular language is the number of distinct left quotients of the language. The quotient complexity of an operation is the maximal quotient complexity of the language resulting…
The quotient complexity of a regular language L is the number of left quotients of L, which is the same as the state complexity of L. Suppose that L and L' are binary regular languages with quotient complexities m and n, and that the…
We survey recent results concerning the complexity of regular languages represented by their minimal deterministic finite automata. In addition to the quotient complexity of the language -- which is the number of its (left) quotients, and…
The state complexity of basic operations on finite languages (considering complete DFAs) has been in studied the literature. In this paper we study the incomplete (deterministic) state and transition complexity on finite languages of…
We introduce a flexible class of well-quasi-orderings (WQOs) on words that generalizes the ordering of (not necessarily contiguous) subwords. Each such WQO induces a class of piecewise testable languages (PTLs) as Boolean combinations of…
A language L is prefix-closed if, whenever a word w is in L, then every prefix of w is also in L. We define suffix-, factor-, and subword-closed languages in the same way, where by subword we mean subsequence. We study the quotient…
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…
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…
I study the state complexity of binary operations on regular languages over different alphabets. It is well known that if $L'_m$ and $L_n$ are languages restricted to be over the same alphabet, with $m$ and $n$ quotients, respectively, the…
We study the state complexity of regular operations in the class of ideal languages. A language L over an alphabet Sigma is a right (left) ideal if it satisfies L = L Sigma* (L = Sigma* L). It is a two-sided ideal if L = Sigma* L Sigma *,…
An atom of a regular language L with n (left) quotients is a non-empty intersection of uncomplemented or complemented quotients of L, where each of the n quotients appears in a term of the intersection. The quotient complexity of L, which…
Descriptional complexity is the study of the conciseness of the various models representing formal languages. The state complexity of a regular language is the size, measured by the number of states of the smallest, either deterministic or…
We study the state complexity of binary operations on regular languages over different alphabets. It is known that if $L'_m$ and $L_n$ are languages of state complexities $m$ and $n$, respectively, and restricted to the same alphabet, the…
A (left) quotient of a language $L$ by a word $w$ is the language $w^{-1}L=\{x\mid wx\in L\}$. The quotient complexity of a regular language $L$ is the number of quotients of $L$; it is equal to the state complexity of $L$, which is the…
We investigate the nondeterministic state complexity of basic operations for suffix-free regular languages. The nondeterministic state complexity of an operation is the number of states that are necessary and sufficient in the worst-case…
We examine the complexity of basic regular operations on languages represented by Boolean and alternating finite automata. We get tight upper bounds m+n and m+n+1 for union, intersection, and difference, 2^m+n and 2^m+n+1 for concatenation,…
A language $L$ is the orthogonal catenation of languages $L_1$ and $L_2$ if every word of $L$ can be written in a unique way as a catenation of a word in $L_1$ and a word in $L_2$. We establish a tight bound for the state complexity of…
We study the complexity of basic regular operations on languages represented by incomplete deterministic or nondeterministic automata, in which all states are final. Such languages are known to be prefix-closed. We get tight bounds on both…