Related papers: On the Balancedness of Tree-to-word Transducers
We show that the equivalence of deterministic linear top-down tree-to-word transducers is decidable in polynomial time. Linear tree-to-word transducers are non-copying but not necessarily order-preserving and can be used to express XML and…
We show that equivalence of deterministic top-down tree-to-string transducers is decidable, thus solving a long standing open problem in formal language theory. We also present efficient algorithms for subclasses: polynomial time for total…
We study the problem of deciding whether a given language is directed. A language $L$ is \emph{directed} if every pair of words in $L$ have a common (scattered) superword in $L$. Deciding directedness is a fundamental problem in connection…
When can two regular word languages K and L be separated by a simple language? We investigate this question and consider separation by piecewise- and suffix-testable languages and variants thereof. We give characterizations of when two…
In this paper we examine decision problems associated with various classes of convex languages, studied by Ang and Brzozowski (under the name "continuous languages"). We show that we can decide whether a given language L is prefix-,…
We show that equivalence of deterministic linear tree transducers can be decided in polynomial time when their outputs are interpreted over the free group. Due to the cancellation properties offered by the free group, the required…
A set of words, also called a language, is letter-balanced if the number of occurrences of each letter only depends on the length of the word, up to a constant. Similarly, a language is factor-balanced if the difference of the number of…
We present two structural results concerning longest common prefixes of non-empty languages. First, we show that the longest common prefix of the language generated by a context-free grammar of size $N$ equals the longest common prefix of…
This paper studies balancedness for infinite words and subshifts, both for letters and factors. Balancedness is a measure of disorder that amounts to strong convergence properties for frequencies. It measures the difference between the…
Compositions of tree-walking tree transducers form a hierarchy with respect to the number of transducers in the composition. As main technical result it is proved that any such composition can be realized as a linear bounded composition,…
Linear extended top-down tree transducers (or synchronous tree-substitution grammars) are popular formal models of tree transformations. The expressive power of compositions of such transducers with and without regular look-ahead is…
We study succinctness as a measure of the expressive power of transformers. Succinctness -- how compactly a formalism can describe a language relative to other formalisms -- is a classical notion in logic and automata theory. We prove that…
Minimizing finite automata, proving trace equivalence of labelled transition systems or representing sofic subshifts involve very similar arguments, which suggests the possibility of a unified formalism. We propose finite states…
The class of Boolean combinations of tree languages recognized by deterministic top-down tree automata (also known as deterministic root-to-frontier automata) is studied. The problem of determining for a given regular tree language whether…
A language L is prefix-free if, whenever words u and v are in L and u is a prefix of v, then u=v. Suffix-, factor-, and subword-free languages are defined similarly, where "subword" means "subsequence". A language is bifix-free if it is…
Rational word languages can be defined by several equivalent means: finite state automata, rational expressions, finite congruences, or monadic second-order (MSO) logic. The robust subclass of aperiodic languages is defined by: counter-free…
A word-to-word function is continuous for a class of languages~$\mathcal{V}$ if its inverse maps $\mathcal{V}$_languages to~$\mathcal{V}$. This notion provides a basis for an algebraic study of transducers, and was integral to the…
Indexed languages are a classical notion in formal language theory, which has attracted attention in recent decades due to its role in higher-order model checking: They are precisely the languages accepted by order-2 pushdown automata. The…
This paper introduces derivation trees for general grammars. Within these trees, it defines context-dependent pairs of nodes, corresponding to rewriting two neighboring symbols using a non context-free rule. It proves that the language…
In relation to Itzkowitz's problem, we show that a $\mathfrak c$-bounded $P$-group is balanced if and only if it is functionally balanced. We prove that for an arbitrary $P$-group, being functionally balanced is equivalent to being strongly…