On sparseness, ambiguity and other decision problems for acceptors and transducers
3rd annual symposium on theoretical aspects of computer science on STACS 86
Relating the type of ambiguity of finite automata to the succinctness of their representation
SIAM Journal on Computing
On the degree of ambiguity of finite automata
Theoretical Computer Science
Separating Exponentially Ambiguous Finite Automata from Polynomially Ambiguous Finite Automata
SIAM Journal on Computing
Descriptional complexity of deterministic finite automata with multiple initial states
Journal of Automata, Languages and Combinatorics
On the state complexity of k-entry deterministic finite automata
Journal of Automata, Languages and Combinatorics - Special issue: selected papers of the second internaional workshop on Descriptional Complexity of Automata, Grammars and Related Structures (London, Ontario, Canada, July 27-29, 2000)
Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness
Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness
Succinctness of descriptions of context-free, regular and finite languages.
Succinctness of descriptions of context-free, regular and finite languages.
Economy of description by automata, grammars, and formal systems
SWAT '71 Proceedings of the 12th Annual Symposium on Switching and Automata Theory (swat 1971)
Multiple-entry finite automata
Journal of Computer and System Sciences
Descriptional complexity of (un)ambiguous finite state machines and pushdown automata
RP'10 Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Reachability problems
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We define a structurally unambiguous finite automaton (SUFA) to be a nondeterministic finite automaton (NFA) with one starting state q0 such that for all input strings w and for any state q, there is at most one path from q0 to q that consumes w. The definition of SUFA differs from the usual definition of an unambiguous finite automaton (UFA) in that the new definition is defined in terms of the transition logic of the finite automaton, and is independent of the choice of final states. We show that SUFA can be exponentially more succinct in the number of states than UFA and MDFA (deterministic finite automata with multiple initial states). Some interesting examples of SUFA are given. We argue that SUFA is a meaningful concept, and can have practical importance as it can implemented efficiently on synchronous models of parallel computation.