University of Engineering and Technology Peshawar

Department of Computer Science and Information

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 1) Answer the following:
a. Regular language
b. Generalize Transition graph
c. Regular Grammar
Answer:
a. Regular Language:
A regular language is a type of formal language that can be expressed using regular
expressions, and it can be recognized by finite automata, such as:
 Deterministic Finite Automaton (DFA)
 Non-Deterministic Finite Automaton (NFA)
Regular languages are a subset of formal languages used in computer science and
linguistics for pattern matching and language recognition.
Characteristics of Regular Languages:
1. Finite Description: They can be described using regular expressions or finite automata.
2. Closure Properties: Regular languages are closed under operations such as:
o Union (L1 U L2): Combining two languages.
o Concatenation (L1 L2): Appending strings from one language to another.
o Kleene Star (L*L): Repeating strings from a language zero or more times.
o Intersection (L1 ꓵ L2): Common strings between two languages.
o Complementation: Strings not in the language.
3. Recognition: They can be recognized by finite automata (DFA or NFA).
Examples of Regular Languages:
1. Strings with a Fixed Pattern:
o Example: Strings over {a,b}\{a, b\}{a,b} ending with "ab".
o Regular Expression:*ab
2. Strings of a Fixed Length:
o Example: Strings of length 3 over {0,1}\{0, 1\}{0,1}.
o Regular Expression: (0|1)(0|1)(0|1)
b. Generalize transitional Graph:
A generalized transition graph (GTG) is a transition graph whose edges are labeled
with regular expressions or string of input alphabets rest part of the graph is same
as the usual transition graph.

Formal definition of generalized transition graph:

A generalized transition graph is defined by a 5-tuple, are as follows;

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  F : A set of final or accepting states F ⊆
 A finite set, δ of transitions, (directed edge labels) (u, s, v), where u, v ∈ Q and s is a regular
expression over Σ.
Generalize Transitional Graph consist of: Informally a generalized transition graph is a
collection of three things are as follows;
1. GTG consists finite number of states, at least one of which is start state and some (maybe
none) final states.
2. GTG consist finite set of input letters (Σ) from which input strings are formed.
3. Directed edges in GTG connecting some pair of states labeled with regular expression.
Example:

c. Regular Grammar:
A regular language is a formal language that can be defined in a few ways, including:
 Regular expression
A regular language can be defined by a regular expression, which is a sequence of sub-
expressions. Regular expressions can be used to describe a set of strings, or language, that
can be made up of characters from a specified alphabet.
 Finite automaton
A regular language can be defined as a language that is recognized by a finite automaton. A
finite automaton is a mathematical formalism that can be used to describe a regular
language.
 Set operations
A regular language can be constructed using set operations, such as union, concatenation,
and Kleene star.
Used in:
Regular languages are used in computer science for parsing, designing programming languages,
and helping computer scientists recognize patterns in data. They are a key topic in computability
theory.
Some theorems about regular languages include:
 If L and L are regular languages, then the new language L = L ∪ L is regular.
 If L is a regular language, its complement L is also regular.

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 2) What is the importance of Context Free Grammar in automata theory? Discuss it with
a short example.
Answer:
Context Free Grammar:
CFG stands for context-free grammar. It is a formal grammar which is used to generate all
possible patterns of strings in a given formal language. Context-free grammar G can be
defined by four tuples as:
G = (V, T, P, S)
 Parsing:
CFGs are used in the design of parsers for programming languages to check the syntactic
correctness of code.
 Connection to Pushdown Automata (PDA):
Every CFL generated by a CFG can be recognized by a pushdown automaton (PDA), a type
of automaton with a stack for memory.
 Compiler Design:
CFGs are the foundation for designing context-free grammars that define the syntax of
programming languages (e.g., Java, C, Python).
Components of a CFG:
A CFG is a 4-tuple G=(V,Σ,R,S)G = (V, \Sigma, R, S)G=(V,Σ,R,S):
 VVV: A finite set of non-terminal symbols (variables).
 Σ\Σ: A finite set of terminal symbols (input alphabet).
 RRR: A finite set of production rules of the form A→αA \to \A→α, where A∈VA \in VA∈V
and α∈(V∪Σ)∗\ \in (V \cup \Sigma)^*α∈(V∪Σ)∗.
 SSS: The start symbol.
Example:
Construct the CFG for the language having any number of a's over the set ∑= {a}.
Solution:
As we know the regular expression for the above language is:
r.e. = a*
Production rule for the Regular expression is as follows:
S → aS rule 1
S → ε rule 2
Now if we want to derive a string "aaaaaa", we can start with start symbols.
S
aS
aaS rule 1
aaaS rule 1
aaaaS rule 1
aaaaaS rule 1
aaaaaaS rule 1
aaaaaaε rule 2
aaaaaa
The r.e. = a* can generate a set of string {ε, a, aa, aaa,.....}. We can have a null string
because S is a start symbol and rule 2 gives S → ε.

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 Real-Life Applications:
1. Programming Languages: CFGs define grammar rules for programming languages (e.g.,
parsing expressions in compilers).
2. Natural Language Processing (NLP): CFGs help model syntactic structures in natural
language.
3. XML and JSON Parsing: CFGs are used to validate and parse hierarchical data structures
like XML and JSON.

The End Assignment 2

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