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Regular Proofs

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Murtaza Tunio
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7 views2 pages

Regular Proofs

Uploaded by

Murtaza Tunio
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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1 Closure Properties

Closure Properties

• Recall that we can carry out operations on one or more languages to obtain a new language

• Very useful in studying the properties of one language by relating it to other (better under-
stood) languages

• Most useful when the operations are sophisticated, yet are guaranteed to preserve interesting
properties of the language.

• Today: A variety of operations which preserve regularity

– i.e., the universe of regular languages is closed under these operations

Definition 1. Regular Languages are closed under an operation op on languages if

L1 , L2 , . . . Ln regular =⇒ L = op(L1 , L2 , . . . Ln ) is regular

1.1 Boolean Operators


Operations from Regular Expressions

Proposition 2. Regular Languages are closed under ∪, ◦ and ∗ .


Proof. (Summarizing previous arguments.)
• L1 , L2 regular =⇒ ∃ regexes R1 , R2 s.t. L1 = L(R1 ) and L2 = L(R2 ).

– =⇒ L1 ∪ L2 = L(R1 ∪ R2 ) =⇒ L1 ∪ L2 regular.
– =⇒ L1 ◦ L2 = L(R1 ◦ R2 ) =⇒ L1 ◦ L2 regular.
– =⇒ L∗1 = L(R1∗ ) =⇒ L∗1 regular.

Closure Under Complementation

Proposition 3. Regular Languages are closed under complementation, i.e., if L is regular then
L = Σ∗ \ L is also regular.
Proof. • If L is regular, then there is a DFA M = (Q, Σ, δ, q0 , F ) such that L = L(M ).

• Then, M = (Q, Σ, δ, q0 , Q \ F ) (i.e., switch accept and non-accept states) accepts L.

What happens if M (above) was an NFA?


Closure under ∩

1
Proposition 4. Regular Languages are closed under intersection, i.e., if L1 and L2 are regular
then L1 ∩ L2 is also regular.

Proof. Observe that L1 ∩ L2 = L1 ∪ L2 . Since regular languages are closed under union and
complementation, we have

• L1 and L2 are regular

• L1 ∪ L2 is regular

• Hence, L1 ∩ L2 = L1 ∪ L2 is regular.

Is there a direct proof for intersection (yielding a smaller DFA)?


Cross-Product Construction
Let M1 = (Q1 , Σ, δ1 , q1 , F1 ) and M2 = (Q2 , Σ, δ2 , q2 , F2 ) be DFAs recognizing L1 and L2 , respec-
tively.
Idea: Run M1 and M2 in parallel on the same input and accept if both M1 and M2 accept.
Consider M = (Q, Σ, δ, q0 , F ) defined as follows

• Q = Q1 × Q2

• q0 = hq1 , q2 i

• δ(hp1 , p2 i, a) = hδ1 (p1 , a), δ2 (p2 , a)i

• F = F1 × F2

M accepts L1 ∩ L2 (exercise)
What happens if M1 and M2 where NFAs? Still works! Set δ(hp1 , p2 i, a) = δ1 (p1 , a) × δ2 (p2 , a).
An Example

1
1
q00 0 0 q00 q01
1 1
0 0 × q01 q11 = 0 0 0 0
1 1
q10 q10 q11
1
1

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