A New Technique for Reachability of States in Concatenation Automata [chapter]

Sylvie Davies
2018 Lecture Notes in Computer Science  
We present a new technique for demonstrating the reachability of states in deterministic finite automata representing the concatenation of two languages. Such demonstrations are a necessary step in establishing the state complexity of the concatenation of two languages, and thus in establishing the state complexity of concatenation as an operation. Typically, ad-hoc induction arguments are used to show particular states are reachable in concatenation automata. We prove some results that seem to
more » ... capture the essence of many of these induction arguments. Using these results, reachability proofs in concatenation automata can often be done more simply and without using induction directly.
doi:10.1007/978-3-319-94631-3_7 fatcat:cm2ib6aar5djjdylm32l2c6que