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Formal Language and Automata Theory

CHAPTER 2 FINITE STATE AUTOMATA & THEIR LANGUAGES

Objectives Objectives At the end of this chapter, the students will be able to understand:

1.Define deterministic finite automata (DFA)? 2. Extended transition function 3. Define Languages of the DFA 4. Evaluate minimization of the DFA.

INTRODUCTION

Now time has come to define formally concept of finite automaton which is called

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2.1. DETERMINISTIC FINITE STATE AUTOMATA & THEIR LANGUAGES

2.1.1. Definition of Deterministic Finite Automaton

2.1.2. Simpler Notations for DFA's

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2.1.2.1. Transition Diagram

Example 2.1

Problem: Let us formally specify a DFA that accepts all and only the

Figure 2.1 Shows the transition diagram for the DFA that is designed for this problem Explained in above lines. We see in the diagram (Figure 2.1) the three nodes that cor-

Figure 2.1. The transition diagram for the DFA accepting all strings with a substring 01

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2.1.2.2. Transition Table

Transition table has * and

which indicate accepting and start state in the DFA.

Figure 2.2. Transition Table for the DFA of example 2.1

2.1.3. How a DFA processes Strings

If we look at the example 2.1, formal definition of the automaton where end of the string is 01 which is substring as well can be defined equivalently in another way also.

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2.1.4. Extending Transition function to Strings

(2.1)

Figure 2.3. Transition diagram for the DFA of example 2.2

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Example 2.2. Let us design a DFA which accept the language

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Figure 2.4 Transition Table for the DFA of example 2.2

2.1.5. The Language of a DFA

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2.2. REGULAR EXPRESSIONS AND REGULAR LANGUAGES

Regular expressions are another type of language defining notation. Regular expressions also may be thought of as a programming language, in which we express some important applications such as text-search applications or compiler components. Regular expressions are closely related to nondeterministic finite automata and can be thought of as a user friendly alternative to the NFA notation for describing software components. More details related to Regular expressions are in chapter 4.

2.3 Minimization of DFA

Some DFA states can be redundant. For example following DFA accepts (a|b) +

Figure 2.5 DFA accepts (a|b) +

Figure 2.6 DFA accepts (a|b) +

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In above figures 2.5 and 2.6 DFAs are equivalent. State s1 is not necessary. This is a state-minimized (or just minimized) DFA. Every remaining state is necessary. The task of DFA minimization, then, is to automatically transform a given DFA into a stateminimized DFA. Several algorithms and variants are known

For each regular language that can be accepted by a DFA, there exists a DFA with a minimum number of states (and thus a minimum programming effort to create and use) and this DFA is unique (except that states can be given different names. There are three classes of states that can be removed/merged from the original DFA without affecting the language it accepts. Unreachable states are those states that are not reachable from the initial state of the DFA, for any input string. Dead states are those nonaccepting states whose transitions for every input character terminate on themselves. These are also called Trap states because once entered there is no escape. Nondistinguishable states are those that cannot be distinguished from one another for any input string. DFA minimization is usually done in three steps, corresponding to the removal/merger of the relevant states. Since the elimination of nondistinguishable states is computationally the most expensive one, it's usually done as the last step.

DFA Minimization Idea Remove unreachable states, i.e. states which cannot be reached from the start state. Build equivalence classes among states via a fixpoint construction. Two states (q,q') cannot be equivalent if one is a final state and the other is not.

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If from (q1,q1') we can reach (q2,q2') via q1 a ! q2 and q1' a ! q2' and we know that (q2,q2') cannot be equivalent, then (q1,q1') cannot be equivalent either.

2.3.1 DFA Minimization Algorithm Recall that a DFA M=(Q, , , q0, F) Two states p and q are distinct if o p in F and q not in F or vice versa, or o for some in , (p, ) and (q, ) are distinct

Using this inductive definition, we can calculate which states are distinct Create lower-triangular table DISTINCT, initially blank For every pair of states (p,q): o If p is final and q is not, or vice versa DISTINCT(p,q) =

Loop until no change for an iteration: o For every pair of states (p,q) and each symbol If DISTINCT(p,q) is blank and DISTINCT( (p,), (q,) ) is not blank DISTINCT(p,q) =

Combine all states that are not distinct

Hopcroft's algorithm One algorithm for merging the nondistinguishable states of a DFA, due to Hopcroft (1971), is based on partition refinement, partitioning the DFA states into groups by their behavior. These groups represent equivalence classes of the MyhillNerode equivalence relation, whereby every two states of the same partition are equivalent if they have the same behavior for all the input sequences. That is, for every two states p1 and p2 that belong to the same equivalence class within the partition P, it will be the case that for every input word w, if one follows the transitions determined by w from the two states p1
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and p2 one will either be led to accepting states in both cases or be led to rejecting states in both cases; it should not be possible for w to take p1 to an accepting state and p2 to a rejecting state or vice versa.

SUMMARY

GUIDED QUESTIONS
1. Give DFAs accepting following languages over the alphabet {0, 1}:

2. Give DFAs accepting the following languages over the alphabet {0, 1}.

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3. Give DFAs accepting the following languages over the alphabet {0, 1}.

REFERENCES
a. Hopcroft J. E., Motwani R, Ullman J.D. Chapter 2 Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation, 2nd edition 2001 Addison-Wesley,

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