I'm kind a stuck with automaton and grammars problem. I've searched a lot but without any success.
Is it even possible to construct a grammar generating this language L?
L = { a(2i) | i >= 0}
Can anyone provide me with simple solution?
It's certainly possible to write a grammar for this language, but it won't be a context-free grammar. That's easy to demonstrate using the pumping lemma.
The pumping lemma states that for any CFL, there is some integer p such that any string s in the language whose length is at least p can be written as uvxyz, where u, v, x, y and z are strings and vy is not empty, and for all integers n, the string uvnxynz is also in the language.
That is, for any string in the language (whose length l is greater than p), there is there some k such that there are strings in the language whose lengths are l + nk for any integer n. That is not the case for the language a2i, since those strings have exponential lengths, so the language cannot be context-free.
Constructing a non-context-free grammar for the language is not that difficult, but I don't know how useful it is.
The following is a Type 0 grammar (i.e. it's not context-sensitive either), but only because of the productions used to get rid of the metacharacters. The basic idea here is that there we put start and end markers around the string ([ and ]) and we have a "duplicator" (↣) which moves from left to right doubling the a's; when it hits the end marker, it either turns into a back-shuttle (↢) or it eats the end-marker and turns into a start-marker-destroyer (↞)
Start: [↣a]
↣a: aa↣
↣]: ↢]
↣]: ↞
a↢: ↢a
a↞: ↞a
[↢: [↣
[↞:
Related
How can you prove the language L given below is not context-free, I would like to know does my proof given below makes any sense, if not, what would be the correct method to prove?
L = {a^n b^n c^i|n ≤ i ≤ 2n}
I am trying to solve this language by contradiction. Suppose L is regular and with pumping length p such that S = a^p b^p c^p. Observe that S ∉ L. Since there must be a pumping cycle xy with length less than p, this can duplicate y which consists of some number of b to cause x(y^2)z to enter the language because the number of b exceeds the number of c by no longer bound by the given condition of i which is n ≤ i ≥ 2n, therefore, we have contradiction and hence language L is not context-free.
The proof is by contradiction. Assume the language is context-free. Then, by the pumping lemma for context-free languages, any string in L can be written as uvxyz where |vxy| < p, |vy| > 0 and for all natural numbers k, u(v^k)x(y^k)z is in the language as well. Choose a^p b^p c^(p+1). Then we must be able to write this string as uvxyz so that |vy| > 0. There are several possibilities to consider:
v and y consist only of a's. In this case, pumping in either direction causes the numbers of a's and b's to differ, producing a string not in the language; so this cannot be the case.
v and y consist only of a's and b's. In this case, pumping might keep the numbers of a's and b's the same, but pumping up will eventually cause the number of c's to be less than the number of a's and b's; so this cannot be the case.
v and y consist only of b's. This case is similar to (1) above and so cannot be a valid choice.
v and y consist only of b's and c's. Also similar to (1) and (3) in that pumping will cause the numbers of a's and b's to differ.
v and y consist only of c's. Pumping up will eventually cause there to be more c's than twice the number of a's; so this cannot be the case either.
No matter how we choose v and y, pumping will produce strings not in the language. This is a contradiction; this means our assumption that the language is context-free must have been incorrect.
I have a language L, which is defined as: L = { b^n c^n a^n , n>=1}
The corresponding grammar would be able to create words such as:
bca
bbccaa
bbbcccaaa
...
How would such a grammar look like? Making two variables dependent of each other is relatively simple, but I have trouble with doing it for three.
Thanks in advance!
L = { b^n c^n a^n , n>=1}
As pointed out in the comments, this is a canonical example of a language which is not context free. It can be shown using the pumping lemma for context-free languages. Basically, consider a string like b^p c^p a^p where p is the pumping length and then show no matter what part you pump, you will throw off the balance (basically, the size of the part that's pumped is less than p, so it cannot "span" all three symbols to keep them in sync).
L = {a^m b^n c^n a^(m+n) |m ≥ 0,n ≥ 1}
As suggested in the comments, this is not context free either. It can be shown using the pumping lemma for context-free languages as well. However, given a proof (or acceptance) of the above, there is an easier way. Recall that the intersection of a regular language and a context-free language must be context free. Assume L is context-free. Then so must be its intersection with the regular language (b+c)(b+c)* a*. However, that intersection can be expressed as b^n c^n a^n (since m is forced to be zero), which we know is not context-free, a contradiction. Therefore, our assumption was wrong and L is not context free either.
In the dragon book, LL grammar is defined as follows:
A grammar is LL if and only if for any production A -> a|b, the following two conditions apply.
FIRST(a) and FIRST(b) are disjoint. This implies that they cannot both derive EMPTY
If b can derive EMPTY, then a cannot derive any string that begins with FOLLOW(A), that is FIRST(a) and FOLLOW(A) must be disjoint.
And I know that LL grammar can't be left recursive, but what is the formal reason? I guess left-recursive grammar will contradict rule 2, right? e.g., I've written following grammar:
S->SA|empty
A->a
Because FIRST(SA) = {a, empty} and FOLLOW(S) ={$, a}, then FIRST(SA) and FOLLOW(S) are not disjoint, so this grammar is not LL. But I don't know if it is the left-recursion make FIRST(SA) and FOLLOW(S) not disjoint, or there is some other reason? Put it in another way, is it true that every left-recursive grammar will have a production that will violate condition 2 of LL grammar?
OK, I figure it out, if a grammar contains left-recursive production, like:
S->SA
Then somehow it must contain another production to "finish" the recursion,say:
S->B
And since FIRST(B) is a subset of FIRST(SA), so they are joint, this violates condition 1, there must be conflict when filling parse table entries corresponding to terminals both in FIRST(B) and FIRST(SA). To summarize, left-recursion grammar could cause FIRST set of two or more productions to have common terminals, thus violating condition 1.
Consider your grammar:
S->SA|empty
A->a
This is a shorthand for the three rules:
S -> SA
S -> empty
A -> a
Now consider the string aaa. How was it produced? You can only read one character at a time if you have no lookahead, so you start off like this (you have S as start symbol):
S -> SA
S -> empty
A -> a
Fine, you have produced the first a. But now you cannot apply any more rules because there is no more non-terminals. You are stuck!
What you should have done was this:
S -> SA
S -> SA
S -> SA
S -> empty
A -> a
A -> a
A -> a
But you don't know this without reading the entire string. You would need an infinite amount of lookahead.
In a general sense, yes, every left-recursive grammar can have ambiguous strings without infinite lookahead. Look at the example again: There are two different rules for S. Which one should we use?
An LL(k) grammar is one that allows the construction of a deterministic, descent parser with only k symbols of lookahead. The problem with left recursion is that it makes it impossible to determine which rule to apply until the complete input string is examined, which makes the required k potentially infinite.
Using your example, choose a k, and give the parser an input sequence of length n >= k:
aaaaaaa...
A parser cannot decide if it should apply S->SA or S->empty by looking at the k symbols ahead because the decision would depend on how many times S->SA has been chosen before, and that is information the parser does not have.
The parser would have to choose S->SA exactly n times and S->empty once, and it's impossible to decide which is right by looking at the first k symbols in the input stream.
To know, a parser would have to both examine the complete input sequence, and keep count of how many times S->SA has been chosen, but such a parser would fall outside of the definition of LL(k).
Note that unlimited lookahead is not a solution because a parser runs on limited resources, so there will always be a finite input sequence of a length large enough to make the parser crash before producing any output.
In the book "The Theory of Parsing", Volume 2, by Aho and Ullman, page 681 you can find Lemma 8.3 that states: "No LL(k) grammar is left-recursive".
The proof says:
Suppose that G = (N, T, P, S) has a left-recursive nonterminal A. Then there is a derivation A -> Aw. If w -> e then it is easy to show that G is ambiguous and hence cannot be LL. Thus, assume that w -> v for some v in T+ (a non empty string of terminals). We can further assume that A -> u, being u some string of terminals and that there exists a derivation
Hence, there is another derivation:
how can i show a language is context sensitive with a non deterministic turing machine?
i know that a language that is accepted by a Linear bound automaton (LBA ) is a context -sensitive language. And a LBA is a non-deterministic turing machine.
Any idea how can i relate all these and show that a language is context sensitive?
As templatetypedef's answer has some flaws (which I will point out in a second in a comment), I give a quick answer to your question:
The language is context sensitive if (and only if) you can give a nondeterministic turing machine using linear space that defines L.
Let L = { a^n b^n a^n } for an arbitrary integer n; a^n here means n concatenations of the symbol a. This is a typical context sensitive language. Instead of giving a CSG, you can give a LBA to show that L is context sensitive:
The turing machine M 'guesses' (thanks to nondeterminism) n [in other words you may say 'every branch of the nondeterministic search tree tries out another n], and then checks whether the input matches a^n b^n a^n. You need log n cells to store n, the matching might need (if implemented trivially) another log n cells. As n + 2log n < 2n, this machine needs only linear space, and is therefore an LBA, hence L is context sensitive.
This is not an exact answer, but since the context-sensitive languages are precisely those accepted by a linear-bounded automaton (a TM with O(n) space on its tape), the context-sensitive languages are precisely those in DSPACE(n). Moreover, we know that NTIME(n) = DSPACE(n). This means that if you can find a linear-time NTM that decides membership in some language L, that language must be context-sensitive. However, there still might be a context-sensitive language that does not have a linear-time NTM (I don't know whether there is a definitive answer to this or whether this is an open problem), so this is not an exact characterization.
Hope this helps!
Is the language of all strings over the alphabet "a,b,c" with the same number of substrings "ab" & "ba" regular?
I believe the answer is NO, but it is hard to make a formal demonstration of it, even a NON formal demonstration.
Any ideas on how to approach this?
It's clearly not regular. How is an FA going to recognize (abc)^n c (cba)^n. Strings like this are in your language, right? The argument is a simple one based on the fact that there are infinitely many equivalence classes under the indistinguishability relation I_l.
The most common way to prove a language is NOT regular is using on of the Pumping Lemmas.
Using the lemma is a little tricky, since it has all those "exists" and so on. To prove a language L is not regular using the pumping lemma you have to prove that
for any integer p,
there is a word w in L of length n, with n>=p, such that
for all possible ways to decompose w as xyz, with len(xy) <= p and y non empty
there exists an i such that x(y^i)z (repeating the y bit i times) is NOT in L
whooo!
I'l l show how the proof looks for the "same number of as and bs" language. It should be straighfoward to convert to your case:
for any given p, we can make a word of length n = 2*p
a^p b^p (p a's followed by p b's)
any way you decompose this into xyz w/ |xy| <=p, y will only contain a's.
Thus, pumping the the y part will make the word have more as than bs,
thus NOT belonging to L.
If you need intuition on why this works, it follows from how you need to be able to count to arbritrarily large numbers to verify if a word belongs to one of these languages. However, Regular Languages are described by finite automata and no finite automata can represent the infinite ammount of states required to represent all the numbers. (The Wikipedia article should have a formal proof).
EDIT: It looks like you can't straight up use the pumping lemma in this particular case directly: if you always make y be one character long you can never make a word stop being accepted (aba becoming abbbba makes no difference and so on).
Just do the equivalence class approach suggested by Patrick87 - it will probably turn out to be cleaner than any of the dirty hacks you would need to do to make the pumping lemma applicable here.