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1-Automata Lec1

Jdjfksldlad

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24 views23 pages

1-Automata Lec1

Jdjfksldlad

Uploaded by

berkeunver2
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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FORMAL LANGUAGE AND

AUTOMATA THEORY
Lecture 1: Introduction
Why Study Automata?
• A survey of Stanford grads 5 years out asked which
of their courses did they use in their job.
• Basics like CS106 (Programming courses) took the
top spots, of course.
• But among optional courses, CS154 (Introduction to
Automata and Complexity Theory) stood
remarkably high.
• One of the most fundamental courses of Computer
Science.
• It is mainly about what kind of things can really
compute mechanically.
2
What is automata theory
• Automata theory is the study of abstract
computational devices
• Abstract devices are (simplified) models of
real computations
• Computations happen everywhere: On your
laptop, on your cell phone, in nature, …
• Why do we need abstract models?
Finite automata model protocols,
electronic circuits, …
Theory is used in model-checking

BATTERY

input: switch
output: light bulb
actions: flip switch
states: on, off
A simple “computer”

BATTERY start off on

input: switch
output: light bulb bulb is on if and only if
there was an odd number
actions: f for “flip switch” of flips
states: on, off
Another “computer”
1

BATTERY

inputs: switches 1 and 2


actions: 1 for “flip switch 1”
actions: 2 for “flip switch 2”
states: on, off
Another “computer”
1
1 start off off
1

2 2 2 2
BATTERY
1
2
off on
1

inputs: switches 1 and 2


actions: 1 for “flip switch 1” bulb is on if and only if
actions: 2 for “flip switch 2” both switches were flipped
an odd number of times
states: on, off
What kind of things can really
compute mechanically?
Question:
Do you know how a vending machine works? Can
you design one?

Vending machine room seen in


Hokkaido, Japan 2004
• How to design a vending machine?
→ Use a finite automaton!
• Assumptions (for simplicity):

– Only 5-dollar and 10-dollar coins are used.

– Only drinks all of 20 dollars are sold.


Only 5-dollar and 10-dollar coins are used.
Only drinks all of 20 dollars are sold.
Solution

Requiring “memory” called “states” for the design.

$10
$5 $15
$5

start $0 $5 $5 $10 $5

$10 $10 transition diagram


$10 $20
A gumball machine
machine takes $5 and $10 coins
a gumball costs $15
actions: +5, +10elease

一五
A gumball machine
machine takes $5 and $10 coins
a gumball costs $15
actions: +5, +10elease
一五 +10 +10

+5 +5 +5, +10
$0 $5 $10
+5, +10
A design problem
1 4

?
5
BATTERY

Can you design a circuit where the light is on if and only


if all the switches were flipped exactly the same number
of times?
A design problem
• Such devices are difficult to reason about,
because they can be designed in an infinite
number of ways
• By representing them as abstract
computational devices, or automata, we will
learn how to answer such questions
These devices can model many things
• They can describe the operation of any “small
computer”, like the control component of an
alarm clock or a microwave
• They are also used in lexical analyzers to recognize
well formed expressions in programming
languages:
ab1 is a legal name of a variable in C
5u= is not
Languages & Grammars
• Languages: “A language is a
Or “words” collection of sentences of finite
length all constructed from a
finite alphabet of symbols”
• Grammars: “A grammar can be
regarded as a device that
enumerates the sentences of a
language” - nothing more,
nothing less

• N. Chomsky, Information and


Control, Vol 2, 1959

Image source: Nowak et al. Nature, vol 417, 2002 17


Context-free grammars
• They are used to describe the syntax of
essentially every programming language.
– Not to forget their important role in describing
natural languages.

18
Some devices we will see

finite automata Devices with a finite amount of memory.


Used to model “small” computers.

push-down Devices with infinite memory that can be


automata accessed in a restricted way.
Used to model parsers, etc.

Turing Machines Devices with infinite memory.


Used to model any computer.
Turing Machines

– This is a general model of a computer, capturing


anything we could ever hope to compute
– Surprisingly, there are many things that we cannot
compute, for example:
Write a program that, given the code of another
program in C, tells if this program ever outputs
the word “hello”

– It seems that you should be able to tell just by looking


at the program, but it is impossible to do!
Problems
• Examples of problems we will consider
– Given a word s, does it contain the subword
“fool”?
– Given a number n, is it divisible by 7?
– Given a pair of words s and t, are they the same?
– Given an expression with brackets, e.g. (()()),
does every left bracket match with a subsequent
right bracket?
• All of these have “yes/no” answers.
Some highlights of the course
• Finite automata
– Automata are closely related to the task of searching
for patterns in text
find (ab)*(ab) in abracadabra

• Grammars
– Grammars describe the meaning of sentences in
English, and the meaning of programs in Java
– We will see how to extract the meaning out of a
program
Theory of computations layers

Undecidable

Turing Machine
CFL

FSM

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