Related papers: On state complexity for subword-closed languages
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 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…
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 investigate the state complexity of the upward and downward closure and interior operations on commutative regular languages. Then, we systematically study the state complexity of these operations and of the shuffle operation on…
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…
In this paper we consider the state complexity of an operation on formal languages, root(L). This naturally entails the discussion of the monoid of transformations of a finite set. We obtain good upper and lower bounds on the state…
The downward closure of a word language is the set of all (not necessarily contiguous) subwords of its members. It is well-known that the downward closure of any language is regular. While the downward closure appears to be a powerful…
In this work we construct an automaton for the commutative closure of a given regular group language. The number of states of the resulting automaton is bounded by the number of states of the original automaton, raised to the power of the…
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…
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…
The infimal prefix-closed, controllable and observable superlanguage plays an essential role in the relationship between controllability, observability and co-observability -- the central notions of supervisory control theory. Existing…
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…
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…
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…
We provide an exact estimate on the maximal subword complexity for quasiperiodic infinite words. To this end we give a representation of the set of finite and of infinite words having a certain quasiperiod q via a finite language derived…
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 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…
We answer two open questions by (Gruber, Holzer, Kutrib, 2009) on the state-complexity of representing sub- or superword closures of context-free grammars (CFGs): (1) We prove a (tight) upper bound of $2^{\mathcal{O}(n)}$ on the size of…
This paper studies the complexity of languages of finite words using automata theory. To go beyond the class of regular languages, we consider infinite automata and the notion of state complexity defined by Karp. Motivated by the seminal…
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…