Formal Language and Automata Theory
(CS2201)
Instructor: Abyayananda Maiti
Mail id: [email protected]
Phone: 8130
Syllabus
Alphabet, languages and grammars.
Regular languages and finite automata: Regular expressions and languages, deterministic
finite automata (DFA), nondeterministic finite automata (NFA), regular grammars and
equivalence with finite automata, properties of regular languages, pumping lemma for regular
languages.
Context-free languages and pushdown automata: Context-free grammars (CFG) and
languages (CFL), Chomsky and Greibach normal forms, nondeterministic pushdown automata
(PDA), ambiguity in CFG, pumping lemma for context-free languages, deterministic pushdown
automata.
Context-sensitive languages: Context-sensitive grammars (CSG) and languages, linear
bounded automata.
Turing machines: The basic model for Turing machines (TM), Turing- recognizable
(recursively enumerable) and Turing-decidable (recursive), variants of Turing machines
Undecidability: Church-Turing thesis, universal Turing machine, reduction between languages
and Rice’s theorem, undecidable problems about languages.
Books
1. J. E. Hopcroft, R. Motwani and J. D. Ullman, Introduction to Automata
Theory, Languages and Computation, Pearson Education India (3rd edition).
2. K. L. P. Mishra, N. Chandrasekaran, Theory of Computer Science:
Automata, Languages and Computation, PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd. (3rd edition).
3. D. I. A. Cohen, Introduction to Computer Theory, John Wiley & Sons, 1997.
4. J. C. Martin, Introduction to Languages and the Theory of Computation,
Tata McGraw-Hill (3rd Ed.).
5. H. R. Lewis and C. H. Papadimitriou, Elements of the Theory of
Computation, Prentice Hall, 1997.
6. Garey, D.S., Johnson, G., Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the
Theory of NP- Completeness, Freeman, New York, 1979
Evaluation Policy
EndSem – 40%
MidSem – 30%
Quizzes, Internal Assessments – 30%
Why Study Automata Theory and
Formal Languages?
•A survey of Stanford grads 5 years out asked which
of their courses did they use in their job.
•Basics like Programming took the top spots, of
course.
•But among other courses, Automata Theory stood
remarkably high.
•3X the score for AI, for example.
Why Finite Automata and Regular
Expressions?
•Regular expressions (REs) are used in many systems.
•E.g., UNIX, Linux, OS X,… a.*b.
•E.g., Document Type Definitions describe XML
tags with a RE format like person (name, addr,
child*).
•Finite automata model protocols, electronic circuits.
•Theory is used in model-checking.
Why Context-Free Grammars?
•Context-free grammars (CFGs) are used to describe
the syntax of essentially every modern programming
language.
•Every modern complier uses CFG concepts to parse
programs
•Not to forget their important role in describing natural
languages.
•And Document Type Definitions are really CFG’s.
Why Turing Machines?
•When developing solutions to real problems, we
often confront the limitations of what software can
do.
•Undecidable things – no program can do it 100% of the
time with 100% accuracy.
•Intractable things – there are programs, but no fast
programs.
•A course on Automata Theory and Formal Languages
gives you the tools.
Other Good Stuff
•We’ll learn how to deal formally with discrete
systems.
•Proofs: You never really prove a program correct, but you
need to be thinking of why a tricky technique really works.
•You’ll gain experience with abstract models and
constructions.
•Models layered software architectures.
Course Outline
• Regular Languages and their descriptors:
• Finite automata, nondeterministic finite automata,
regular expressions.
• Algorithms to decide questions about regular
languages, e.g., is it empty?
• Closure properties of regular languages.
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Course Outline – (2)
• Context-free languages and their descriptors:
• Context-free grammars, pushdown automata.
• Decision and closure properties.
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Course Outline – (3)
• Recursive and recursively enumerable
languages.
• Turing machines, decidability of problems.
• The limit of what can be computed.
• Intractable problems.
• Problems that (appear to) require exponential
time.
• NP-completeness and beyond.
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