Related papers: The State Complexity of Lexicographically Smallest…
In a simple pattern matching problem one has a pattern $w$ and a text $t$, which are words over a finite alphabet $\Sigma$. One may ask whether $w$ occurs in $t$, and if so, where? More generally, we may have a set $P$ of patterns and a set…
We introduce deterministic suffix-reading automata (DSA), a new automaton model over finite words. Transitions in a DSA are labeled with words. From a state, a DSA triggers an outgoing transition on seeing a word ending with the…
We introduce deterministic suffix-reading automata (DSA), a new automaton model over finite words. Transitions in a DSA are labeled with words. From a state, a DSA triggers an outgoing transition on seeing a word ending with the…
A subsequence of a word $w$ is a word $u$ such that $u = w[i_1] w[i_2] \dots w[i_{k}]$, for some set of indices $1 \leq i_1 < i_2 < \dots < i_k \leq \lvert w\rvert$. A word $w$ is $k$-subsequence universal over an alphabet $\Sigma$ if every…
A deterministic finite automaton (DFA) separates two strings $w$ and $x$ if it accepts $w$ and rejects $x$. The minimum number of states required for a DFA to separate $w$ and $x$ is denoted by $sep(w,x)$. The present paper shows that the…
We investigate the nondeterministic state complexity of the square-root operation $\sqrt{L}=\{\,w \mid ww\in L\,\}$ on regular languages represented by nondeterministic finite automata. For an $n$-state NFA accepting $L$, it was previously…
A word w of letters on edges of underlying graph Gamma of deterministic finite automaton (DFA) is called the synchronizing word if w sends all states of the automaton to a unique state. J. Cerny discovered in 1964 a sequence of n-state…
Finite-state complexity is a variant of algorithmic information theory obtained by replacing Turing machines with finite transducers. We consider the state-size of transducers needed for minimal descriptions of arbitrary strings and, as our…
Indexing strings via prefix (or suffix) sorting is, arguably, one of the most successful algorithmic techniques developed in the last decades. Can indexing be extended to languages? The main contribution of this paper is to initiate the…
Let G be a context-free grammar (CFG) in Chomsky normal form. We take the number of rules in G to be the size of G. We also assume all CFGs are in Chomsky normal form. We consider the question of, given a string w of length n, what is the…
We study the following natural variation on the classical universality problem: given a language $L(M)$ represented by $M$ (e.g., a DFA/RE/NFA/PDA), does there exist an integer $\ell \geq 0$ such that $\Sigma^\ell \subseteq L(M)$? In the…
A word w is called synchronizing (recurrent, reset, directed) word of a deterministic finite automaton (DFA) if w sends all states of the automaton on a unique state. Jan Cerny had found in 1964 a sequence of n-state complete DFA with…
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 use results from communication complexity, both new and old ones, to prove lower bounds for unambiguous finite automata (UFAs). We show three results. $\textit{Complement:}$ There is a language $L$ recognised by an $n$-state UFA such…
Given an order of the underlying alphabet we can lift it to the states of a finite deterministic automaton: to compare states we use the order of the strings reaching them. When the order on strings is the co-lexicographic one \emph{and}…
A word $w$ over an alphabet $\Sigma$ is a Lyndon word if there exists an order defined on $\Sigma$ for which $w$ is lexicographically smaller than all of its conjugates (other than itself). We introduce and study \emph{universal Lyndon…
In this paper, we study a series of algorithmic problems related to the subsequences occurring in the strings of a given language, under the assumption that this language is succinctly represented by a grammar generating it, or an automaton…
We prove that a uniformly random automaton with $n$ states on a 2-letter alphabet has a synchronizing word of length $O(n^{1/2}\log n)$ with high probability (w.h.p.). That is to say, w.h.p. there exists a word $\omega$ of such length, and…
For a word $S$, let $f(S)$ be the largest integer $m$ such that there are two disjoints identical (scattered) subwords of length $m$. Let $f(n, \Sigma) = \min \{f(S): S \text{is of length} n, \text{over alphabet} \Sigma \}$. Here, it is…
This paper studies the complexity of operations on finite automata and the complexity of their decision problems when the alphabet is unary. Let $n$ denote the maximum of the number of states of the input finite automata considered in the…