Finite Deterministic Cover Automata (DFCA) can be obtained from Deterministic Finite Automata (DFA) using the similarity relation and a method of merging similar states. The DFCA minimization procedure can yield different results depending on the order of merging the similar states, because the minimal DFCA for a finite language is in general not unique. We count the number of minimal DFCA that can be obtained from a given minimal DFA with n states

Regular expressions are used in many practical applications. Practical regular expressions are commonly called "regex". It is known that regex are different from regular expressions. In this paper, we give regex a formal treatment. We make a distinction between regex and extended regex; while regex represent regular languages, extended regex represent a family of languages larger than regular languages. We prove a pumping lemma for the languages

We define the pattern expressions as an extension of both regular expressions and patterns. We prove several properties of the new family of languages, similar to those of extended regex languages [Câmpeanu et al., Int. J. Found. Comput. Sci. 14 (6) (2003) 1007–1018]. We also define an automata system that recognizes these languages. Differences between regex and pattern expressions are also discussed.

Quite often, trivial problems stated for deterministic finite automata (DFA) are surprisingly difficult for the non-deterministic case (NFA). In any non-minimal DFA for a given regular language, we can find two equivalent states which can be “merged” without changing the accepted language. This is not the case for NFA, where we can have non-minimal automata with no “mergible” states. In this paper, we prove a very basic result for NFA, that

In this paper we consider the transformation from (minimal) non-deterministic finite automata (NFAs) to deterministic finite cover automata (DFCAs). We want to compare the two equivalent accepting devices with respect to their number of states; this becomes in fact a comparison between the expression power of the nondeterministic device and the expression power of the deterministic with loops device. We prove a lower bound for the maximum state complexity

We present a fast incremental algorithm for constructing minimal Deterministic Finite Cover Automata (DFCA) for a given language. Since it was shown that the minimal DFCA for a language L has less states than the minimal Deterministic Finite Automata (DFA) for the same language L, this technique seems to be the best choice for incrementally building the automaton for a large language, especially when the number of states in the DFCA is significantly

How likely is that a randomly given (non-) deterministic finite automaton recognizes no word? A quick reflection seems to indicate that not too many finite automata accept no word; but, can this intuition be confirmed? In this paper we offer a statistical approach which allows us to conclude that for automata, with a large enough number of states, the probability that a given (non-) deterministic finite automaton recognizes no word is close to zero.