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Lecture # 2
Languages
Alphabet and Strings
Alphabet: An alphabet is a finite set of symbols, usually
letters, digits, and punctuations.
Valid/In-valid alphabets: An alphabet may contain
letters consisting of group of symbols for example Σ=
{a, ba, bab, d}.
Remarks: While defining an alphabet of letters
consisting of more than one symbols, no letter should
be started with the letter of the same alphabet i.e.
one letter should not be the prefix of another.
However, a letter may be ended in a letter of same
alphabet.
a,:ba, c
Valid alphabet
a, ab
Invalid alphabet : , c
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Alphabets and Strings
String or word: A finite sequence of
letters/alphabets
Examples: “cat”, “dog”, “house”, “read” …
Defined over an alphabet:
a, b, c, , z
Concatenation of finite number of letters
from the alphabet is called a string.
Words are strings belonging to some
language.
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Sometimes a string with no symbol at all is
used, denoted by (Small Greek letter
Lambda) λ or (Capital Greek
letter Lambda) Λ, is called an empty string or
null string
All words are strings, but not all strings are
words.
Sentences are made up of certain
combinations of words.
Not all combinations of words lead to a valid English sentence.
Three aspects/specifications
Lexical
Defines valid words/units of a language
Syntactic
Defines rules for combining the units to
form valid sentences (computer programs
in context of machines)
Semantic
Concerned with the interpretation or
meaning of a sentence (what output to
produce in context of machines)
Affected by ambiguity the most.
Formal languages
List of words
Set of all valid words of a given language,
e.g., a language English_Words that
contains all valid words of English would
have a = {all entries of the dictionary
+ punctuation marks and blank space}
Denoted by
Is Finite or Infinite set.
Strings: A string a finite sequence of symbols
chosen from alphabet. For example
0111100 , 123045, abbbcdeg etc.
String Variable: A letter used for
denoting a string. The author uses w, x, y
and z as string variable. For example
w = 0111100 , x = 123045, z = abbbcdeg
Length of String: The number of positions
for symbols in the string. For simplicity
we can say that it is the number of
symbols in the string. For example
|w| = 7 , |x| = ? , |z| = ?
Alphabets and Strings
We will use small letters for alphabets:
a, b
Strings
a
ab u ab
abba v bbbaaa
baba w abba
aaabbbaabab
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String Operations
Let we have following strings
w a1a2 an abba
v b1b2 bm bbbaaa
Concatenation
wv a1a2 anb1b2 bm abbabbbaaa
Reverse
R
w an a2a1 abba
aaabbb
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String Length
w a1a2 an
Length: w n
Examples: abba 4
aa 2
a 1
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Length of Concatenation
uv u v
Example: u aab, u 3
v abaab, v 5
uv aababaab 8
uv u v 3 5 8
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Empty String
A string with no letters: or or
Observations: 0
w w w
abba abba abba
Note-1: A language that does not
contain any word at all is denoted by
or { }. This language doesn’t contain
any word not even the NULL string.
i.e. { } ≠ {}
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Empty String
Note-2: Suppose a language L doesn’t
contain NULL then
L=L+
but L ≠ L + {}.
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Substring
Substring of string:
a subsequence of consecutive characters
String Substring
abbab ab
abbab abba
abbab b
abbab bbab
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Prefix and Suffix
Let the string is abbab
Prefixes Suffixes
abbab w uv
a bbab
prefix
ab bab
suffix
abb ab
abba b
abbab
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Repeat Operation
n
w - w repeated n time; that is,
n
w ww
w
n
2
Example: abba abbaabba
0
w
0
Definition: abba
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The * Operation
: the set of all possible strings from
* alphabet , called closure of alphabets also known as
Kleene star operator or Kleene star closure.
a , b
i.e. infinitely many words each of finite length.
* , a, b, aa, ab, ba, bb, aaa, aab,
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The + Operation
: the set of all possible strings from
alphabet except , also known as Kleene plus operator.
a, b
*
Note :
, a , b , aa , ab , ba
are infinite
, bb, aaa , aab,
*
a, b, aa, ab, ba, bb, aaa, aab,
* and
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Languages
A language is a set of strings OR
A language is any subset of *, usually
denoted by L. It may be finite or infinite.
Example: a, b
* , a, b, aa, ab, ba, bb, aaa,
Languages:
a, aa, aab
{ , abba, baba, aa, ab, aaaaaa}
If a string w is in L, we say that w is a
sentence of L. 23
Note that:
Sets { } {}
Set size {} 0
n n
An infinite language L {a b : n 0}
ab
L abb L
aabb
aaaaabbbbb
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Operations on Languages
The usual set operations
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More Examples
n n
L {a b : n 0}
2 n n m m
L {a b a b : n, m 0}
2
aabbaaabbb L
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Star-Closure (Kleene *)
0 1 2
Definition: L* L L L
Example:
,
a, bb,
a, bb*
aa , abb, bba , bbbb,
aaa, aabb, abba, abbbb,
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Positive Closure
1 2
Definition: L L L
L *
a, bb,
a, bb aa, abb, bba, bbbb,
aaa, aabb, abba, abbbb,
Note: L+ includes if and only if L includes
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Lexicographical Order
Assume that the symbols in are
themselves ordered.
Definition: A set of strings is in
lexicographical order if
-The strings are grouped first according to
their length.
-Then, within each group, the strings are
ordered “alphabetically” according to the
ordering of the symbols.
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Lexicographical Order
Ex: Let the alphabet be {a, b}
The set of all strings in Lexicographical
order is
, a, b, aa, ab, ba, bb, aaa, …., bbb, aaaa, …,
bbbb, ….
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