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Computing Small Nondeterministic Finite Automata (1995)
| Venue: | Proc. Workshop on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, Dept. of CS, Univ. of Aarhus |
| Citations: | 10 - 2 self |
BibTeX
@INPROCEEDINGS{Matz95computingsmall,
author = {Oliver Matz and Andreas Potthoff},
title = {Computing Small Nondeterministic Finite Automata},
booktitle = {Proc. Workshop on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, Dept. of CS, Univ. of Aarhus},
year = {1995},
pages = {74--88},
publisher = {SpringerVerlag}
}
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Abstract
We study the minimization problem for nondeterministic finite automata. Two approaches are discussed, based on the construction of two versions of "canonical" automata (for a given regular language), in which minimal automata occur as subautomata. We introduce a heuristic for this search, which has been implemented in the program AMoRE. Introduction Minimization of nondeterministic finite automata ("NFA") is more difficult than that of deterministic finite automata. The problem is PSPACE-complete (except for the case of one-letter-alphabets) [6], whereas deterministic finite automata can be minimized in time O(n \Delta log n) [4]. Moreover, there is in general not a unique minimal NFA recognizing a given regular language. Procedures for minimization of nondeterministic finite automata are investigated in several papers, e.g. Kameda and Weiner [10] (see also Indermark [7]) and Kim [11]. Further references are given in Brauer's monograph [2]. The purpose of this note is twofold. First, ...
