Local language (formal language)
In mathematics, a local language is a formal language for which membership of a word in the language can be determined by looking at the first and last symbol and each two-symbol substring of the word.[1] Equivalently, it is a language recognised by a local automaton, a particular kind of deterministic finite automaton.[2] Formally, a language L over an alphabet A is defined to be local if there are subsets R and S of A and a subset F of A×A such that a word w is in L if and only if the first letter of w is in R, the last letter of w is in S and no factor of length 2 in w is in F.[3] This corresponds to the regular expression[1][4]
- [math]\displaystyle{ (RA^* \cap A^*S) \setminus A^*FA^* \ . }[/math]
More generally, a k-testable language L is one for which membership of a word w in L depends only on the prefix and suffix of length k and the set of factors of w of length k;[5] a language is locally testable if it is k-testable for some k.[6] A local language is 2-testable.[1]
Examples
- Over the alphabet {a,b,[,]}[4]
- [math]\displaystyle{ aa^*,\ [ab] \ . }[/math]
Properties
- The family of local languages over A is closed under intersection and Kleene star, but not complement, union or concatenation.[4]
- Every regular language not containing the empty string is the image of a local language under a strictly alphabetic morphism.[1][7][8]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Salomaa (1981) p.97
- ↑ Lawson (2004) p.130
- ↑ Lawson (2004) p.129
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Sakarovitch (2009) p.228
- ↑ Caron, Pascal (2000-07-06). "Families of locally testable languages". Theoretical Computer Science 242 (1): 361–376. doi:10.1016/S0304-3975(98)00332-6. ISSN 0304-3975. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304397598003326.
- ↑ McNaughton & Papert (1971) p.14
- ↑ Lawson (2004) p.132
- ↑ McNaughton & Papert (1971) p.18
- Lawson, Mark V. (2004). Finite automata. Chapman and Hall/CRC. ISBN 1-58488-255-7.
- McNaughton, Robert; Papert, Seymour (1971). Counter-free Automata. Research Monograph. 65. With an appendix by William Henneman. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-13076-9. https://archive.org/details/CounterFre_00_McNa.
- Sakarovitch, Jacques (2009). Elements of automata theory. Translated from the French by Reuben Thomas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-84425-3.
- Salomaa, Arto (1981). Jewels of Formal Language Theory. Pitman Publishing. ISBN 0-273-08522-0.
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