Automata theory with modern applications / James A. Anderson ; with contributions by Tom Head.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- 1 Introduction -- 1.1 Sets -- 1.2 Relations -- 1.3 Functions -- 1.4 Semigroups -- 2 Languages and codes -- 2.1 Regular languages -- 2.2 Retracts (Optional) -- 2.3 Semiretracts and lattices (Optional) -- 3 Automata -- 3.1 Deterministic and nondeterministic automata -- 3.2 Kleene's Theorem -- 3.3 Minimal deterministic automata and syntactic monoids -- Procedure -- 3.4 Pumping Lemma for regular languages -- 3.5 Decidability -- 3.6 Pushdown automata -- 3.7 Mealy and Moore machines -- 4 Grammars -- 4.1 Formal grammars -- 4.2 Chomsky normal form and Greibach normal form -- 4.3 Pushdown automata and context-free languages -- 4.4 The Pumping Lemma and decidability -- 5 Turing machines -- 5.1 Deterministic Turing machines -- 5.2 Nondeterministic Turing machines and acceptance of context-free languages -- 5.3 The halting problem for Turing machines -- 5.4 Undecidability problems for context-free languages -- 6 A visual approach to formal languages -- 6.1 Introduction -- 6.2 A minimal taste of word combinatorics -- 6.3 The spectrum of a word with respect to a language -- 6.4 The spectral partition of Sigma+ and the support of L -- 6.5 Visualizing languages -- 6.6 The sketch parameters of a language -- 6.7 Flag languages -- 6.8 Additional tools from word combinatorics -- 6.9 Counting primitive words in a regular language -- 6.10 Algorithmic sketching of regular languages -- 7 From biopolymers to formal language theory -- 7.1 Introduction -- 7.2 Constructing new words by splicing together pairs of existing words -- 7.3 The motivation from molecular biology -- 7.4 Splicing rules, schemes, systems, and languages -- 7.5 Every splicing language is a regular language -- 7.6 The syntactic monoid of a regular language L allows an effective determination of the set of all splicing rules that respect L -- 7.7 It is algorithmically decidable whether a given regular language is a reflexive splicing language -- Appendix A: Cardinality -- Appendix B: Co-compactness Lemma -- References -- Further reading -- Index.

Recent applications to bioscience have created a new audience for automata theory and formal languages. This is the only introduction to cover such applications. With over 350 exercises, many examples and illustrations, this is an ideal contemporary introduction for students; others, new to the field, will welcome it for self-learning.

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