Skip to content

01 Alpha, Strings, Lang

Model of Computation

  1. FSM(Finite State Machine) Has Memory/State
  2. FSM with Stack
  3. Turing Machine Read/Write capability

A problem that cannot be solved by a Turing Machine is not computable.

Symbols

Symbol Meaning Description
\(\Sigma\) Set of Alphabet Non-empty finite set of symbols
eg: \(\{0, 1 \}\)
String Finite sequence of zero/symbols
\(\vert s \vert\) Length of string s
\(\Sigma^k\) Set of strings of length \(k\)
\(\Sigma^1\) Set of strings of length 1 eg: \(\{0, 1 \}\)
\(\epsilon\) Empty String “”
\(\phi, \{ \}\) Null set
(Empty)
\(\phi \ne \epsilon \ne \{\epsilon\}\)
\(L\) Language Finite/countably-infinite set of strings over a finite alphabet

Operations

On Strings

Operation Representation Description
Concatenation \(S_1 \cdot S_2\) \(S_1\) followed by \(S_2\)
Power \(S^n\) Concatenation with itself for \(n\) times
Closure $\begin{aligned} \Sigma^+ &= \Sigma^1 \cup \Sigma^2 \cup \dots \
\Sigma^* &= \Sigma^0 \cup \Sigma^1 \cup \Sigma^2 \cup \dots \ &= { \epsilon } \cup \Sigma^+ \end{aligned}$ Union of infinite concatenation with itself
Also called as Kleene Closure/Star

On Languages

Operation Representation Description
Union \(L_1 \cup L_2\) Union of both sets
Intersection \(L_1 \cap L_2\) Intersection of both sets
Concatenation \(L_1 \cdot L_2\)
Complement $\begin{aligned} &L'\
= &\Sigma^* - L \end{aligned}$ Opposite of defined language
Swap all accepting and rejecting states
Closure of languages \(L^*\) Similar to that of string
Power Set of \(\Sigma^*\) $\begin{aligned} P(S) &= 2{\Sigma*} \
\vert P(S) \vert &= 2^{\vert S \vert} \end{aligned}$ Set of all subsets of \(\Sigma^*\)
\[ \begin{aligned} L = \phi \implies L^* &= \{ \epsilon \} \\ \text{How?} \implies L^* &= L^0 \cup L^1 \cup \dots \\ &= \{ \epsilon \} \cup \phi \cup \dots \\ &= \{ \epsilon \} \end{aligned} \]
Last Updated: 2024-01-24 ; Contributors: AhmedThahir

Comments