Finite state machines for strings over infinite alphabets

  • Authors:
  • Frank Neven;Thomas Schwentick;Victor Vianu

  • Affiliations:
  • Limburgs Universitair Centrum, Diepenbeek, Belgium;Philipps-Universität Marburg, Marburg, Germany;University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Computational Logic (TOCL)
  • Year:
  • 2004

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Motivated by formal models recently proposed in the context of XML, we study automata and logics on strings over infinite alphabets. These are conservative extensions of classical automata and logics defining the regular languages on finite alphabets. Specifically, we consider register and pebble automata, and extensions of first-order logic and monadic second-order logic. For each type of automaton we consider one-way and two-way variants, as well as deterministic, nondeterministic, and alternating control. We investigate the expressiveness and complexity of the automata and their connection to the logics, as well as standard decision problems. Some of our results answer open questions of Kaminski and Francez on register automata.