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Track B: Automata, Logic, Semantics, and Theory of Programming

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2026.186

Edit Distance of Finite-Valued Transducers

Authors: Prince Mathew and Saina Sunny

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 374, 53rd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2026)

Abstract

Transducers generalise automata by producing output word(s) for each input word, thereby defining a relation over words. A transducer is said to be finite-valued if, for every input word, it produces at most k output words, for some constant k. If k = 1, then the transducer is said to be functional. The edit distance between two transducers is the minimal number of edits required to transform every output of one transducer into some output of the other, for each input word. This notion has been studied for functional transducers, where it is shown to be computable. However, it is uncomputable for transducers in general. In this work, we show the computability of the edit distance of finite-valued transducers, a class that is strictly more expressive than functional transducers.

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Prince Mathew and Saina Sunny. Edit Distance of Finite-Valued Transducers. In 53rd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 374, pp. 186:1-186:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{mathew_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2026.186,
  author =	{Mathew, Prince and Sunny, Saina},
  title =	{{Edit Distance of Finite-Valued Transducers}},
  booktitle =	{53rd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2026)},
  pages =	{186:1--186:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-428-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{374},
  editor =	{Bhattacharya, Sayan and Nanongkai, Danupon and Benedikt, Michael and Puppis, Gabriele},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2026.186},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-265752},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2026.186},
  annote =	{Keywords: Edit distance, Finite state transducers, Rational relations, Finite-valued, Multi-sequential}
}

Document

Track B: Automata, Logic, Semantics, and Theory of Programming

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.155

Approximate Problems for Finite Transducers

Authors: Emmanuel Filiot, Ismaël Jecker, Khushraj Madnani, and Saina Sunny

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 334, 52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2025)

Abstract

Finite (word) state transducers extend finite state automata by defining a binary relation over finite words, called rational relation. If the rational relation is the graph of a function, this function is said to be rational. The class of sequential functions is a strict subclass of rational functions, defined as the functions recognised by input-deterministic finite state transducers. The class membership problems between those classes are known to be decidable. We consider approximate versions of these problems and show they are decidable as well. This includes the approximate functionality problem, which asks whether given a rational relation (by a transducer), is it close to a rational function, and the approximate determinisation problem, which asks whether a given rational function is close to a sequential function. We prove decidability results for several classical distances, including Hamming and Levenshtein edit distance. Finally, we investigate the approximate uniformisation problem, which asks, given a rational relation R, whether there exists a sequential function that is close to some function uniformising R. As its exact version, we prove that this problem is undecidable.

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Emmanuel Filiot, Ismaël Jecker, Khushraj Madnani, and Saina Sunny. Approximate Problems for Finite Transducers. In 52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 334, pp. 155:1-155:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{filiot_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.155,
  author =	{Filiot, Emmanuel and Jecker, Isma\"{e}l and Madnani, Khushraj and Sunny, Saina},
  title =	{{Approximate Problems for Finite Transducers}},
  booktitle =	{52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2025)},
  pages =	{155:1--155:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-372-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{334},
  editor =	{Censor-Hillel, Keren and Grandoni, Fabrizio and Ouaknine, Jo\"{e}l and Puppis, Gabriele},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.155},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-235329},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.155},
  annote =	{Keywords: Finite state transducers, Edit distance, Determinisation, Functionality}
}

Document

Track B: Automata, Logic, Semantics, and Theory of Programming

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2024.125

Edit Distance of Finite State Transducers

Authors: C. Aiswarya, Amaldev Manuel, and Saina Sunny

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 297, 51st International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2024)

Abstract

We lift metrics over words to metrics over word-to-word transductions, by defining the distance between two transductions as the supremum of the distances of their respective outputs over all inputs. This allows to compare transducers beyond equivalence. Two transducers are close (resp. k-close) with respect to a metric if their distance is finite (resp. at most k). Over integer-valued metrics computing the distance between transducers is equivalent to deciding the closeness and k-closeness problems. For common integer-valued edit distances such as, Hamming, transposition, conjugacy and Levenshtein family of distances, we show that the closeness and the k-closeness problems are decidable for functional transducers. Hence, the distance with respect to these metrics is also computable. Finally, we relate the notion of distance between functions to the notions of diameter of a relation and index of a relation in another. We show that computing edit distance between functional transducers is equivalent to computing diameter of a rational relation and both are a specific instance of the index problem of rational relations.

Cite as

C. Aiswarya, Amaldev Manuel, and Saina Sunny. Edit Distance of Finite State Transducers. In 51st International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 297, pp. 125:1-125:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{aiswarya_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2024.125,
  author =	{Aiswarya, C. and Manuel, Amaldev and Sunny, Saina},
  title =	{{Edit Distance of Finite State Transducers}},
  booktitle =	{51st International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2024)},
  pages =	{125:1--125:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-322-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{297},
  editor =	{Bringmann, Karl and Grohe, Martin and Puppis, Gabriele and Svensson, Ola},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2024.125},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-202682},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2024.125},
  annote =	{Keywords: transducers, edit distance, conjugacy}
}

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Edit Distance of Finite-Valued Transducers

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Approximate Problems for Finite Transducers

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Edit Distance of Finite State Transducers

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