Introduction

The Basic Concepts of Automata

Alphabet
 String
Languages
 Grammars
Finite automata, Deterministic and Non-
deterministic finite automata
3. Some Applications

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 Automata theory
.

 Automaton theory: Study of abstract computing devices, or

machines
 Automata theory deals with the definitions and properties of
mathematical models of computation.
 Automata : is a self-operating machine, or a machine or control
mechanism designed to follow automatically a predetermined
sequence of operations, or respond to predetermined instructions.

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 Automaton
.

 Automaton = an abstract computing device

 Note: A device need not even be a physical hardware!
 Automata means something that works automatically.
 Automata are a model that used in text processing, compilers,
and hardware design called the finite automaton
 Another model, called the context-free grammar, is used in
programming languages and artificial intelligence.

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 Con…
.

 A fundamental question in computer science are:

 Find out what different models of machines can do and
cannot do?

 The theory of computation

 Computability vs. Complexity
 Computability theory: what kinds of things can you
solve with a computer and what kinds of things can’t
you solve with a computer?
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 Con…
.

 Complexity theory: focuses on how hard is problem to solve using

a computer?
 We’ll define different ways of measuring
hardness: time and space (memory)
 The time complexity - is the number of steps until the
machine halts.
 The space complexity is the number of tape cells used by
the computation.
 Example is factorial number

 A famous unsolved problem is the P vs. NP problem, which will

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 Con…
.

A pioneer of automata theory

ALAN TURING (1912-1954)

Father of Modern Computer Science

English mathematician

Studied abstract machines called Turing

machines even before computers existed

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 Con…
.

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 Con…
 Halting— means that the program on certain input
will accept it and halt or reject it and halt.
 Basically halting means terminating.
 Halting Problem: There does not exist a Turing
machine
that always halts.
 Undecidable: there is no Turing machine that
decides it.
 Intractable: Certain computational problems are solvable in
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principle, but the solutions require so much time or space that
 Con…
.

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 THE CENTRAL CONCEPTS OF AUTOMATA THEORY
.

In this section, we define the basic notions of the subject:

symbols, strings, alphabets and (formal) languages
The mathematical study of the “Theory of Computation” begins by
understanding the Mathematics of strings of symbols.

* A symbol is one of the finite sequences of ASCII characters:

* One of the digits 0–9;
* One of the upper case letters A–Z;
* One of the lower case letters a–z;
* A (, followed by any finite sequence of printable ASCII characters in

10 which ( and) are properly nested, followed by a)

 Alphabet & String
.

 Alphabet: A finite non-empty set of symbols (letters), is

called an alphabet. It is denoted by Σ (Greek letter sigma).
Example
Σ = {a,b}, Σ = {i,j,k}
 String: A “string” over an alphabet is a finite sequence of
symbols from that alphabet, which is usually written next
to one another and not separated by commas.
(i) If Σa = {0 ,1}then 001001 is a string over Σa
(ii) If Σb = {a ,b , , , z) then axyrpqstcd is a string over Σb.

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 String operations
.
Length of String

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 String
.

 Empty String: The string of zero length is called the empty

string. This is denoted by ∈.
 The empty string plays the role of 0 in a number system.
 Reverse String: If w=w1w2...wn where each wi ∈ Σ, the

reverse of w is wnwn-1... w1.

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 Substring:
.

 z is a substring of w if z appears consecutively within w.

Example deck is a substring of abcdeckabcjkl.

 Concatenation: Assume a string x of length m and string y of

length n, the concatenation of x and y is written xy, which is the

string obtained by appending y to the end of x, as in x1x2 ...xmy1

y2..... yn .

To concatenate a string with itself many times we use the

“superscript” notation:
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 Substring:
.

Suffix: If w=xv for some x, then v is a suffix of w.

Prefix: If w=vy for some y, then v is a prefix of w

Lexicographic ordering: The Lexicographic ordering of strings

is the same as the dictionary ordering, except that shorter

strings precede longer strings. The lexicographic ordering of all

strings over the alphabet {0, 1} is (∈, 0,1, 00, 01, 10, 11,

000, ...).

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 Summary
.

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 Language
.

 Language: Any set of strings over an alphabet Σ is called a language.

 A language L is regular if it is the language accepted by some DFA
 The set of all strings, including the empty string over an alphabet Σ
is denoted as Σ*.
Infinite languages L are denoted as: L={w∈ Σ*: has property P}
Examples:
a) L1 = {w ∈{0,1}* : has an equal number of 0's and 1's}
b) L2 = {w∈ Σ* : w= wR } where wR is the reverse string of w.

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 Language
.

Concatenation of Languages: If L1 and L2 are languages over Σ,

their concatenation is L = L1•L2, or simply L =L1L2, where

L = {w ∈ Σ* :w = x •y for some x∈ L1 and y∈L2}.

Example: Given Σ = {0, 1}

L1 = {w ∈ Σ* : w has an even number of 0's}

L 2 = { w: w starts with a 0 and the rest of the symbols are 1's}

then L1 L2 = {w : w has an odd number of 0's}

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 Language
.

Kleene Star: is the set of all strings that can be written as the concatenation

of zero or more strings from L, which is denoted by L*.

L* is the set of all strings obtained by concatenating zero or more strings

from L.

L*= w ∈ Σ*: w=w1....w k for some k ≥0 and some w1,w2,...,wk

∈L

Example: If L = {01, 1, 100} then 110001110011∈ L*, since 110001110011 = 1•

100• 01• 1• 100 • 1• 1, each of these strings is in L.

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 Example
.

Given Σ = {a, b} obtain Σ*.

(a) Give an example of a finite language in Σ.

(b) Given L = {anbn : n ≥0 } , check if the strings aabb, aaaabbbb, abb are in the language L.

Solution: Σ = {a, b} Therefore we have

Σ* = {λ , a, b, aa ,ab, ba, bb, aaa }

(a) {a, aa, aab} is an example of a finite language in Σ.

(i) aa bb → a string in L. (n = 2)

(ii) aaaa bbbb → a string in L. (n = 4)

(iii) abb → not a string in L (since there is no n satisfying this).

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 Summary
.

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 Grammars
.

 Grammar is a mechanism to describe the languages.

 A grammar (G) is defined as a quadruple
G = (V, T, S, P) where
V = Finite set of objects called VARIABLES
T = Finite set of objects called TERMINAL SYMBOLS
S ∈V = Start variables
P = Finite set of Productions.
A production rule P is of the form x→y
 Given a string w, of the form w = uxv, we can use
the production rule x → y and obtain a new string
z = uyv.
 Grammars
.

 The set of all strings obtained by using production rules is the Language generated

by the Grammar.
 If the grammar G = (V, T, S, P) then

L(G ) = {w∈T* :S w}

If W ∈ L(G) , then the sequence

 S ⇒w1 ⇒w2 ⇒ w3 . . .⇒ wn ⇒ w is a “derivation” of the sentence w.

 The string S, w1, w2, wn which contain variables as well as terminals, are called

“SENTENTIAL FORMS” of the derivation.

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.
Grammars
Example: Given a Grammar
G = ({S } , {a ,b}, S , P) with P defined as
S →aSb,
S→λ

i. Obtain a sentence in the language generated by G and the sentential form

ii. Obtain the language L(G).

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.
Grammars
Applying the production rule S → aSb , we get
ai S bi ⇒ ai+1 S bi+1
This is true for all i.
In order to get a sentence we apply S → λ.
Therefore we get S an S bn ⇒an bn
There fore L(G) = {anbn ;n ≥ 0 }.

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.
Grammars

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 Summary
.

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 Practical Examples
.

 On/Off switch
actio
n
state

 Modeling recognition of the word “then”

Start state Transition Intermediate Final state

state

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 Structural expressions
.

 Grammars
 Regular expressions
E.g. Unix style to capture city names such as “Palo Alto CA”:
 [A-Z][a-z]*([ ][A-Z][a-z]*)*[ ][A-Z][A-Z]

Start with a letter

A string of other
letters (possibly empty) Should end w/ 2-letter state code

Other space delimited words

(part of city name)

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 Some Applications
.

 Software for designing and checking the behavior of digital

circuits
 Lexical analyzer of a typical compiler
 Software for scanning large bodies of text (e.g., web pages),
for pattern finding
 Software for verifying systems of all types that have a finite
number of states (e.g., stock market transaction,
communication/network protocol)

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Exercise
Given L1={ab,bc,ca}, L2={aa,ac,cb} determine
a. L1L2
b. L1
c. L1- L2
d. L1L2

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.

Questions ?

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