Related papers: Complexity of a Problem Concerning Reset Words for…
The automatic complexity of a finite word (string) is an analogue for finite automata of Sipser's distinguishing complexity (1983) and was introduced by Shallit and Wang (2001). For a finite alphabet $\Sigma$ of at least two elements, we…
Using a novel rewriting problem, we show that several natural decision problems about finite automata are undecidable (i.e., recursively unsolvable). In contrast, we also prove three related problems are decidable. We apply one result to…
The avoidability, or unavoidability of patterns in words over finite alphabets has been studied extensively. A word (pattern) over a finite set is said to be unavoidable if, for all but finitely many words, there exists a morphism mapping…
This paper is devoted to finite state automata, regular expression matching, pattern recognition, and the exponential blow-up problem, which is the growing complexity of automata exponentially depending on regular expression length. This…
We generalize the concept of synchronizing words for finite automata, which map all states of the automata to the same state, to deterministic visibly push-down automata. Here, a synchronizing word w does not only map all states to the same…
Finite automata whose computations can be reversed, at any point, by knowing the last k symbols read from the input, for a fixed k, are considered. These devices and their accepted languages are called k-reversible automata and k-reversible…
Term pattern matching is the problem of finding all pattern matches in a subject term, given a set of patterns. Finding efficient algorithms for this problem is an important direction for research [19]. We present a new set automaton…
A $d$-limited automaton is a Turing machine that may rewrite each input cell at most~$d$ times. Hibbard (1967) showed that for every $d \geq 2$ such automata recognize all context-free languages and that deterministic $d$-limited automata…
Complementation and determinization are two fundamental notions in automata theory. The close relationship between the two has been well observed in the literature. In the case of nondeterministic finite automata on finite words (NFA),…
One of the most fundamental problems in computational learning theory is the the problem of learning a finite automaton $A$ consistent with a finite set $P$ of positive examples and with a finite set $N$ of negative examples. By…
A synchronizing word for an automaton is a word that brings that automaton into one and the same state, regardless of the starting position. Cerny conjectured in 1964 that if a n-state deterministic automaton has a synchronizing word, then…
Counter automata are more powerful versions of finite-state automata where addition and subtraction operations are permitted on a set of n integer registers, called counters. We show that the word problem of $\Z^n$ is accepted by a…
Let $\mathcal{P}(\Sigma^*)$ be the semiring of languages, and consider its subset $\mathcal{P}(\Sigma)$. In this paper we define the language recognized by a weighted automaton over $\mathcal{P}(\Sigma)$ and a one-letter alphabet.…
In automata theory, while determinisation provides a standard route to solving many common problems in automata theory, some weak forms of nondeterminism can be dealt with in some problems without costly determinisation. For example, the…
The emptiness and containment problems for probabilistic automata are natural quantitative generalisations of the classical language emptiness and inclusion problems for Boolean automata. It is well known that both problems are undecidable.…
As robots are being integrated into our daily lives, it becomes necessary to provide guarantees on the safe and provably correct operation. Such guarantees can be provided using automata theoretic task and mission planning where the…
The hairpin completion is an operation on formal languages which is inspired by the hairpin formation in biochemistry. Hairpin formations occur naturally within DNA-computing. It has been known that the hairpin completion of a regular…
We revisit the problem of deciding whether a given string is uniquely decodable from its bigram counts by means of a finite automaton. An efficient algorithm for constructing a polynomial-size nondeterministic finite automaton that decides…
We present a Myhill-Nerode style characterization for languages recognized by one-clock deterministic timed automata (1-DTA). Although there is only one clock, distinct automata may reset it differently along the same word. This adds a…
Given a countable set X (usually taken to be the natural numbers or integers), an infinite permutation, \pi, of X is a linear ordering of X. This paper investigates the combinatorial complexity of infinite permutations on the natural…