L2- Theory of Computation -

Preliminary Concepts

Course Instructors:
Div 1: Praveen Pawar (Div 1)
Div 2: Jibi Abraham (Div 2)

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 Examples of Problems
 Examples of problems we will consider
 Given a word s, does it contain the subword “fool”?
 Given a number n, is it divisible by 7?
 Given a pair of words s and t, are they the same?
 Given an expression with brackets, e.g. (()()),
does every left bracket match with a subsequent
right bracket?
 All of these have “yes/no” answers.
 There are other types of problems, that ask
“Find this” or “How many of that”
 Preliminaries of Automata
 How do we formalize the question

Can device A solve problem B?

 First, we need a formal way of describing the

problems that we are interested in solving
 Done by using a few important terms in Theory
of Computation
 Symbol

 A symbol is an abstract entity we shall not

define formally, just as point is not defined in
geometry
 Example:
 0, 1 are symbols of binary digits
 A, B, C, …., Z is symbols of letter alphabet.

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 Alphabet
 An alphabet is a finite, non-empty set of symbols
 We use the symbol ∑ (sigma) to denote an alphabet
 Examples:
 Binary: ∑1 = {0,1}
 Set of (base 10) digits: ∑2 = {0, 1, …, 9}
 All lower case letters: ∑3 = {a, b, c,..z}
 Alphanumeric: ∑4 = {a-z, A-Z, 0-9}
 Set of letters plus special symbols ∑5 = {a, b, …, z, #, $, &}
 Set of open and closed brackets ∑6 = {(, ), [, ] }

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 Strings
 A string or word is a finite sequence of symbols
chosen from an alphabet ∑
 Empty string is  (or “epsilon”)
 Example:
 abfbz is a string over S1 = {a, b, c, d, …, z}
 9021 is a string over S2 = {0, 1, …, 9}
 ab#bc is a string over S3 = {a, b, …, z, #}
 ))()(() is a string over S4 = {(, )}
 Length of a string w, denoted by “|w|”, is equal to the
number of (non- ) characters in the string
 E.g., x = 010100 |x| = 6
 xy = concatenation of two strings x and y

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 Polling Q1
 If S = {0, 1} and x = 01  0  1  00 
 What is |x| = ?
A. 10
B. 6
C. None

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 Power of an Alphabet
 Let ∑ be an alphabet
 The set of all strings of a certain length k from the
alphabet is called Power of an alphabet and is
denoted by ∑k.
 ∑k = the set of all strings of length k
 Example: If Σ ={0,1}, then:
0
 Σ = { }
1
 Σ ={0,1}
2
 Σ ={00,01,10,11}
3
 Σ ={000,001,010,011,100,101,110,111}

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 Power of an Alphabet
 ∑* = ∑0 U ∑1 U ∑2 U …

 ∑+ = ∑1 U ∑2 U ∑3 U …

 ∑* = ∑+ U { }

 * is called Kleene star

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 Kleene star
 In the previous example, Σ ={0,1} and
Σ1={0,1}. What is the difference between Σ
and Σ1
 Σ is an alphabet; its members 0 and 1 are
symbols
 Σ1 is a set of strings; its members are strings
(each one of length 1)

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 Languages
 L is a said to be a language over alphabet ∑, if only if
L  ∑*
 this is because ∑* is the set of all strings (of all
possible length including ) over the given
alphabet ∑
 Examples:
1. Let L be the language all strings in {a, b} which
start and end with a or start and end with b over
{a, b}
L = {aa, bb, aba, aabba, bab…}

What are the strings not in the language?

R = {ab, baa, aabb, ….} 11
 Empty Language
 Definition: Ø denotes the Empty language
 Let L = {}; Is L=Ø?
 Example: Let L be the language of all strings
of with equal number of 0’s and 1’s and of
length 0:
L = {}

So L≠Ø

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 Concatenation of Languages
 Let L1 and L2 be languages. Then the
concatenation of L1 with L2 is denoted as L1L2
and it is defined as :
L1L2 = { uv | u ϵ L1 and v ϵ L2 }
 L1L2 is the set of strings obtained by
concatenating strings of L1 with those of L2.
 Example L1={ab, b}, L2= {aaa, abb, aaba}
L1L2= {abaaa, ababb, abaaba, baaa, babb,
baaba}.

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 Polling Q2
 If L1 = {a, ab} and L2= {bb, b}, the number of
strings in L1L2 is
A. 2

B. 3

C. 4

D. Infinite

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 Languages and Set Notation
 Most of the time it would be more useful to use
set notations to define a language
 Example: L1={x | x∈{a, b}∗ and |x| is even}
 L2={x | there is a w such that xw = illinois}
 L2 is the language made out of all prefixes of
L2.
 Explicitly, L2={, i, il, ill, illi, illin, illino, illinoi,
illinois}

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 The Membership Problem
Given a string w  ∑*and a language L over ∑,
decide whether or not w  L.
Example:
Let w = 100011
Is w  the language of strings with equal
number of 0s and 1s?

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 Decidability
 The abstract Computation model will decide
whether a string belongs to a language or not

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