CS 3240: Languages and Computation

Course Overview

Course Staff

Instructor: Prof. Alberto Apostolico

Email: axa@cc Office: KLAUS 1310 Office Hours:

Tue. & Thur. at 4-5pm Or by appointment

TA: Akshay Wadia

Email: awadia3@mail.gatech.edu Office: KLAUS 2124 Office Hours:

Tue. & Thur. at 10.30-11.30am, Or by appointment

Required Textbook
Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation (3rd Edition) by John E. Hopcroft , Rajeev Motwani , Jeffrey D. Ullman Hardcover Addison Wesley; 3 edition (July 8, 2006) ISBN-10: 0321455363 ISBN-13: 978-0321455369

Required Textbook
Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation (3rd Edition) by John E. Hopcroft , Rajeev Motwani , Jeffrey D. Ullman Hardcover Addison Wesley; 3 edition (July 8, 2006) ISBN-10: 0321455363 ISBN-13: 978-0321455369 This book is complemented by an online resource found at

http://www.aw.com/gradiance
Go to this site, register using the student access code provided with your copy of the book, then login and enter the following class
token at the prompt:

71E4F530

PLEASE DO NOT DISTRIBUTE THIS TOKEN OUTSIDE THE CLASS

Course Objectives

Formal languages

Understand definitions of regular and context-free languages and their corresponding machines Understand their computational powers and limitations Understand Turing machines Understand decidability Lexical Analysis & Compiler Text searching Finite state device design

Theory of computation

Applications Basics

Outline

Regular expressions, DFAs, NFAs and automata Limits on regular expressions, pumping lemma Practical parsing and other applications Context-free languages, grammars, Chomsky Hierarchy Pushdown automata, deterministic vs. non-deterministic Attribute grammars, type inferencing Context-free vs. context-sensitive grammars Turing machines, decidable vs. undecidable problems, reducibility

Grading

Homework: 20% Mini-project: 25% Tests: 30% Final: 25% Homework will try to exploit Gradiance resource http://www.aw.com/gradiance with final version due in class No late homework or assignments without prior approval of instructor Homework should be concise, complete, and precise Tests will be in class. Closed book, closed notes, but one-page cheat-sheet allowed.

Collaboration Policy
Students must write solutions to assignments completely independently General discussions are allowed on assignments among students, but names of collaborators must be reported

Resources

Class webpage
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/AY2007/cs3240_fall/ http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~axa/teaching/Fall2007/

GRADIANCE webpage
http://www.aw.com/gradiance

Check often for announcements and schedule changes.

Introduction & Motivation

Automata & Formal Languages

1930-1940 Turing Machines 1960-1070 Automata & Grammars Compilers Text & Web applications

Compilers

What is a compiler?
A

program that translates an executable program from source language into target language Usually source language is high-level language, and target language is object (or machine) code Related to interpreters

Why compilers?
Programming

in machine (or assembly) language is tedious, error prone, and machine dependent Historical note: In 1954, IBM started developing FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation) language and its compiler

How Does Compiler Work?

Request Token

Scanner Parser

Get Token

Start Front End: Analysis of program syntax and semantics

Semantic Action Checking Intermediate Representation

Semantic Error

Parts of Compilers
Focus of this class.
1. Lexical Analysis Analysis 2. Syntax Analysis 3. Semantic Analysis
4. Code Generation 5. Optimization
Synthesis

Back End

Front End

Basic Concepts

Computational problems can be posed ultimately as decision (yes-no) problems Yes-No problems can be posed ultimately as language recognition problems A language is any set of strings over some alphabet Deciding a language means being able to discriminate the strings belonging to it against all others There are two basic ways to decide a language: Automata & Grammars An Automaton discriminates whether a given input string is in the language or not A Grammar generates all and only the strings in the language There is a subtle correspondence between an automaton and a corresponding grammar Some languages are easy to decide, some are harder, some are impossible We can build a hierarchy of automata , and a corresponding one of grammars based on the complexity of the languages we wish to decide

Limits of Computation

Three easy functions defined on the decimal development of Greek Pi p 3.14159265 The ratio of the circumference to the diagonal of the unit circle

f(n) = 1, if 4 appears before the nth decimal digit of p f(n) = 0 otherwise g(n) = 1, if 4 appears as the nth decimal digit of p g(n) = 0 otherwise h(n) = 1, if 4 appears after the nth decimal digit of p h(n) = 0 otherwise
Do we have an algorithm for f? for g? for h?

Computable, Undecidable, Untractable

Questions of decidability revolve around whether there is an algorithm to solve a certain problem Questions of untractability revolve around whether there is a practically viable algorithm to solve a certain problem Most of the algorithms we design and use are have low computational complexity

Proofs
Deductive

proofs Inductive proofs If-and-only-if proofs Proofs by contradiction Proofs by counterexample Etc.

Deductive Proofs

A chain of statements implying each the next one, leading from the first one (hypothesis) to the last (thesis or conclusion)
For integer x = 4 or higher 2x is not smaller than x2

Try for few values of parameter x, e.g., x=4 or x=6 What happens to the left side and right side when x becomes larger than 4? Left side doubles with unit increase, right side grows by not more than [(x+1)/x]2 , which is 1.5625 for x=4 Exercise 1: generalize to non-integers Exercise 2: give an inductive proof (see next)

Inductive Proofs
Prove a basis statement and an inductive step providing a propagation rule Let S(n) be a statement about integer n Basis: prove S(i) for some fixed value i Inductive step: prove that for any m > i 1, S(m) implies S(m+1)

Inductive Proofs

Prove a basis statement and an inductive step providing a propagation rule Let S(n) be a statement about integer n Basis: prove S(i) for some fixed value i Inductive step: prove for m > i-1 S(m) implies S(m+1)
E.g.1, prove that for any positive n the sum of the first n integers equals n(n+1)/2 (btw did you know how Pitagoras did it?) E.g. 2 Let a binary tree be defined as a single node or a node with having two trees as its children . Prove that any binary tree with n leaves (nodes without children) has precisely n-1 internal nodes (nodes with children)

The structure of Inductive Proofs

Prove the basis statement : check the validity of the claim for initial values of the parameter Prove inductive step :

assume statement is true for all values of the parameter up to n-1 providing a propagation rule Take instance associated with value n Decompose this instance into instances involving smaller values of the parameter Force inductive hypothesis on these instances Re-assemble the instance for value n

Strange things happen when we are not careful E.g.: for any positive n, all horses in a group of n have the same mantel

Additional Proofs
Proofs by contradiction Assume the opposite of hypothesis, show thesis cannot follow Proofs by counterexample

primes are odd Exhibit the even prime 2 (are there also proofs by example?)
All

If-then-else proofs

Automata
Finite Automata model many design and analysis tasks, e.g. Lexical analyzer in a compiler Digital cicuit design Keywork searching in texts or on the web. Software for verifying finite state systems, such as communication protocols. Etc.