Separation and the Successor Relation

Authors Thomas Place, Marc Zeitoun



PDF
Thumbnail PDF

File

LIPIcs.STACS.2015.662.pdf
  • Filesize: 0.59 MB
  • 14 pages

Document Identifiers

Author Details

Thomas Place
Marc Zeitoun

Cite AsGet BibTex

Thomas Place and Marc Zeitoun. Separation and the Successor Relation. In 32nd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2015). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 30, pp. 662-675, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2015)
https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2015.662

Abstract

We investigate two problems for a class C of regular word languages. The C-membership problem asks for an algorithm to decide whether an input language belongs to C. The C-separation problem asks for an algorithm that, given as input two regular languages, decides whether there exists a third language in C containing the first language, while being disjoint from the second. These problems are considered as means to obtain a deep understanding of the class C. It is usual for such classes to be defined by logical formalisms. Logics are often built on top of each other, by adding new predicates. A natural construction is to enrich a logic with the successor relation. In this paper, we obtain new and simple proofs of two transfer results: we show that for suitable logically defined classes, the membership, resp. the separation problem for a class enriched with the successor relation reduces to the same problem for the original class. Our reductions work both for languages of finite words and infinite words. The proofs are mostly self-contained, and only require a basic background on regular languages. This paper therefore gives simple proofs of results that were considered as difficult, such as the decidability of the membership problem for the levels 1, 3/2, 2 and 5/2 of the dot-depth hierarchy.
Keywords
  • separation problem
  • regular word languages
  • logics
  • decidable characterizations
  • semidirect product

Metrics

  • Access Statistics
  • Total Accesses (updated on a weekly basis)
    0
    PDF Downloads

References

  1. Jorge Almeida. A syntactical proof of locality of DA. International Journal on Algebra and Computation, 6:165-177, 1996. Google Scholar
  2. Jorge Almeida. Some algorithmic problems for pseudovarieties. Publicationes Mathematicae Debrecen, 54:531-552, 1999. Proc. of Automata and Formal Languages, VIII. Google Scholar
  3. Karl Auinger. On the decidability of membership in the global of a monoid pseudovariety. International Journal on Algebra and Computation, 20(2):181-188, 2010. Google Scholar
  4. Wojciech Czerwiński, Wim Martens, and Tomáš Masopust. Efficient separability of regular languages by subsequences and suffixes. In Proceedings of the 40th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming, ICALP'13, volume 7966 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 150-161. Springer, 2013. Google Scholar
  5. Volker Diekert and Paul Gastin. First-order definable languages. In Logic and Automata: History and Perspectives, volume 2, pages 261-306. Amsterdam University Press, 2008. Google Scholar
  6. Christian Glaßer and Heinz Schmitz. Languages of dot-depth 3/2. Theory of Computing Systems, 42(2):256-286, 2008. Google Scholar
  7. Karsten Henckell. Pointlike sets: the finest aperiodic cover of a finite semigroup. Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra, 55(1-2):85-126, 1988. Google Scholar
  8. Robert Knast. A semigroup characterization of dot-depth one languages. Rairo Informatique Théorique et Applications, 17(4):321-330, 1983. Google Scholar
  9. Manfred Kufleitner and Alexander Lauser. Around dot-depth 1. International Journal of Foundations of Computer Science, 23(6):1323-1340, 2012. Google Scholar
  10. Robert McNaughton and Seymour Papert. Counter-Free Automata. MIT Press, 1971. Google Scholar
  11. Jean-Éric Pin. A variety theorem without complementation. Russian Mathematics, (Izvestija vuzov.Matematika), 39:80-90, 1995. Google Scholar
  12. Jean-Éric Pin and Pascal Weil. Polynomial closure and unambiguous product. Theory of Computing Systems, 30(4):383-422, 1997. Google Scholar
  13. Jean-Éric Pin and Pascal Weil. The wreath product principle for ordered semigroups. Communications in Algebra, 30:5677-5713, 2002. Google Scholar
  14. Thomas Place and Luc Segoufin. Decidable characterization of FO²(< ,+1) and locality of DA. Unpublished, to appear, 2014. Google Scholar
  15. Thomas Place, Lorijn van Rooijen, and Marc Zeitoun. Separating regular languages by locally testable and locally threshold testable languages. In Proceedings of the 34th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science, FSTTCS'13, volume 24 of LIPIcs, pages 363-375. Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik, 2013. Google Scholar
  16. Thomas Place, Lorijn van Rooijen, and Marc Zeitoun. Separating regular languages by piecewise testable and unambiguous languages. In Proceedings of the 28th MFCS'13, volume 8087 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 729-740. Springer, 2013. Google Scholar
  17. Thomas Place and Marc Zeitoun. Going higher in the first-order quantifier alternation hierarchy on words. In Proceedings of the 41th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming, ICALP'14, volume 8573 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 342-353, 2014. URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1404.6832v1.
  18. Thomas Place and Marc Zeitoun. Separating regular languages with first-order logic. In Proceedings of the Joint Meeting of the 23rd EACSL Annual Conference on Computer Science Logic (CSL'14) and the 29th Annual ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (LICS'14), 2014. Google Scholar
  19. Thomas Place and Marc Zeitoun. A transfer theorem for the separation problem. CoRR, abs/1501.00569, 2015. URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/1501.00569.
  20. Marcel-Paul Schützenberger. On finite monoids having only trivial subgroups. Information and Control, 8:190-194, 1965. Google Scholar
  21. Benjamin Steinberg. A delay theorem for pointlikes. Semigroup Forum, 63(3):281-304, 2001. Google Scholar
  22. Howard Straubing. Finite semigroup varieties of the form V*D. Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra, 36:53-94, 1985. Google Scholar
  23. Denis Thérien and Thomas Wilke. Over words, two variables are as powerful as one quantifier alternation. In Proceedings of the 30th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, STOC'98, pages 234-240. ACM, 1998. Google Scholar
  24. Wolfgang Thomas. Classifying regular events in symbolic logic. Journal of Computer and System Sciences, 25(3):360-376, 1982. Google Scholar
  25. Manfred Kufleitner Pascal Weil. On logical hierarchies within FO^2-definable languages. Logical Methods in Computer Science, 8(3), 2012. Google Scholar
Questions / Remarks / Feedback
X

Feedback for Dagstuhl Publishing


Thanks for your feedback!

Feedback submitted

Could not send message

Please try again later or send an E-mail