LIPIcs.STACS.2024.36.pdf
- Filesize: 0.98 MB
- 20 pages
We study the problem of deciding whether a given language is directed. A language L is directed if every pair of words in L have a common (scattered) superword in L. Deciding directedness is a fundamental problem in connection with ideal decompositions of downward closed sets. Another motivation is that deciding whether two directed context-free languages have the same downward closures can be decided in polynomial time, whereas for general context-free languages, this problem is known to be coNEXP-complete. We show that the directedness problem for regular languages, given as NFAs, belongs to AC¹, and thus polynomial time. Moreover, it is NL-complete for fixed alphabet sizes. Furthermore, we show that for context-free languages, the directedness problem is PSPACE-complete.
Feedback for Dagstuhl Publishing