We introduce the task of out-of-order membership to a formal language L, where the letters of a word w are revealed one by one in an arbitrary order. The length |w| is known in advance, but the content of w is streamed as pairs (i, w[i]), received exactly once for each position i, in arbitrary order. We study efficient algorithms for this task when L is regular, seeking tight complexity bounds as a function of |w| for a fixed target language. Most of our results apply to an algebraically defined variant dubbed out-of-order evaluation: this problem is defined for a fixed finite monoid or semigroup S, and our goal is to compute the ordered product of the streamed elements of w. We show that, for any fixed regular language or finite semigroup, both problems can be solved in constant time per streamed symbol and in linear space. However, the precise space complexity strongly depends on the algebraic structure of the target language or evaluation semigroup. Our main contributions are therefore to show (deterministic) space complexity characterizations, which we do for out-of-order evaluation of monoids and semigroups. For monoids, we establish a trichotomy: the space complexity is either Θ(1), Θ(log n), or Θ(n), where n = |w|. More specifically, the problem admits a constant-space solution for commutative monoids, while all non-commutative monoids require Ω(log n) space. We further identify a class of monoids admitting an O(log n)-space algorithm, and show that all remaining monoids require Ω(n) space. For general semigroups, the situation is more intricate. We characterize a class of semigroups admitting constant-space algorithms for out-of-order evaluation, and show that semigroups outside this class require at least Ω(log n) space. At the same time, we exhibit semigroups for which specialized techniques yield intermediate bounds such as an O(√n)-space algorithm, suggesting that the landscape may be richer and less well-behaved than for the monoid setting.

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Abstract We study the expressive power of polynomial recursive sequences, a nonlinear extension of the well-known class of linear recursive sequences. These sequences arise naturally in the study of nonlinear extensions of weighted automata, where (non)expressiveness results translate to class separations. A typical example of a polynomial recursive sequence is bn = n!. Our main result is that the sequence un = nn is not polynomial recursive.

Harnessing the power of SIMD can bring tremendous performance gains in data processing. In querying streamed JSON data, the state of the art leverages SIMD to fast forward significant portions of the document. However, it does not provide support for descendant, which excludes many real-life queries and makes formulating many others hard. In this work, we aim to change this: we consider the fragment of JSONPath that supports child, descendant, wildcard, and labels. We propose a modular approach based on novel depth-stack automata that process a stream of events produced by a state-driven classifier, allowing fast forwarding parts of the input document irrelevant at the current stage of the computation. We implement our solution in Rust and compare it with the state of the art, confirming that our approach allows supporting descendants without sacrificing performance, and that reformulating natural queries using descendants brings impressive performance gains in many cases.

We study the variety ZG of monoids where the elements that belong to a group are central, i.e., commute with all other elements. We show that ZG is local, that is, the semidirect product ZG * D of ZG by definite semigroups is equal to LZG, the variety of semigroups where all local monoids are in ZG. Our main result is thus: ZG * D = LZG. We prove this result using Straubing's delay theorem, by considering paths in the category of idempotents. In the process, we obtain the characterization ZG = MNil \vee Com, and also characterize the ZG languages, i.e., the languages whose syntactic monoid is in ZG: they are precisely the languages that are finite unions of disjoint shuffles of singleton languages and regular commutative languages.

The regular languages with a neutral letter expressible in first-order logic with one alternation are characterized. Specifically, it is shown that if an arbitrary Σ2 formula defines a regular language with a neutral letter, then there is an equivalent Σ2 formula that only uses the order predicate. This shows that the so-called Central Conjecture of Straubing holds for Σ2 over languages with a neutral letter, the first progress on the Conjecture in more than 20 years. To show the characterization, lower bounds against polynomial-size depth-3 Boolean circuits with constant top fan-in are developed. The heart of the combinatorial argument resides in studying how positions within a language are determined from one another, a technique of independent interest.

We study the dynamic membership problem for regular languages: fix a language L, read a word w, build in time O(|w|) a data structure indicating if w is in L, and maintain this structure efficiently under letter substitutions on w. We consider this problem on the unit cost RAM model with logarithmic word length, where the problem always has a solution in O(log|w| / log log|w|) per operation. We show that the problem is in O(log log|w|) for languages in an algebraically-defined, decidable class QSG, and that it is in O(1) for another such class QLZG. We show that languages not in QSG admit a reduction from the prefix problem for a cyclic group, so that they require Ω(log|w| /log log|w|) operations in the worst case; and that QSG languages not in QLZG admit a reduction from the prefix problem for the multiplicative monoid U₁ = {0, 1}, which we conjecture cannot be maintained in O(1). This yields a conditional trichotomy. We also investigate intermediate cases between O(1) and O(log log|w|). Our results are shown via the dynamic word problem for monoids and semigroups, for which we also give a classification. We thus solve open problems of the paper of Skovbjerg Frandsen, Miltersen, and Skyum [Skovbjerg Frandsen et al., 1997] on the dynamic word problem, and additionally cover regular languages.

Processing tree-structured data in the streaming model is a challenge: capturing regular properties of streamed trees by means of a stack is costly in memory, but falling back to finite-state automata drastically limits the computational power. We propose an intermediate stackless model based on register automata equipped with a single counter, used to maintain the current depth in the tree. We explore the power of this model to validate and query streamed trees. Our main result is an effective characterization of regular path queries (RPQs) that can be evaluated stacklessly---with and without registers. In particular, we confirm the conjectured characterization of tree languages defined by DTDs that are recognizable without registers, by Segoufin and Vianu (2002), in the special case of tree languages defined by means of an RPQ.

We introduce the constrained topological sorting problem (CTS): given a regular language K and a directed acyclic graph G with labeled vertices, determine if G has a topological sort that forms a word in K. This natural problem applies to several settings, e.g., scheduling with costs or verifying concurrent programs. We consider the problem CTS[K] where the target language K is fixed, and study its complexity depending on K. We show that CTS[K] is tractable when K falls in several language families, e.g., unions of monomials, which can be used for pattern matching. However, we show that CTS[K] is NP-hard for K = (ab)^* and introduce a shuffle reduction technique to show hardness for more languages. We also study the special case of the constrained shuffle problem (CSh), where the input graph is a disjoint union of strings, and show that CSh[K] is additionally tractable when K is a group language or a union of district group monomials. We conjecture that a dichotomy should hold on the complexity of CTS[K] or CSh[K] depending on K, and substantiate this by proving a coarser dichotomy under a different problem phrasing which ensures that tractable languages are closed under common operators.

A word-to-word function is continuous for a class of languages V if its inverse maps V languages to V. This notion provides a basis for an algebraic study of transducers, and was integral to the characterization of the sequential transducers computable in some circuit complexity classes. Here, we report on the decidability of continuity for functional transducers and some standard classes of regular languages. Previous algebraic studies of transducers have focused on the structure of the underlying input automaton, disregarding the output. We propose a comparison of the two algebraic approaches through two questions: When are the automaton structure and the continuity properties related, and when does continuity propagate to superclasses?

We investigate a subclass of languages recognized by vector addition systems, namely languages of nondeterministic Parikh automata. While the regularity problem (is the language of a given automaton regular?) is undecidable for this model, we surprisingly show decidability of the regular separability problem: given two Parikh automata, is there a regular language that contains one of them and is disjoint from the other? We supplement this result by proving undecidability of the same problem already for languages of visibly one counter automata.

First-order logic (FO) over words is shown to be equiexpressive with FO equipped with a restricted set of numerical predicates, namely the order, a binary predicate MSB0, and the finite-degree predicates: FO[ARB] = FO[≤, MSB0, FIN]. The Crane Beach Property (CBP), introduced more than a decade ago, is true of a logic if all the expressible languages admitting a neutral letter are regular. Although it is known that FO[ARB] does not have the CBP, it is shown here that the (strong form of the) CBP holds for both FO[≤, FIN] and FO[≤, MSB0]. Thus FO[≤, FIN] exhibits a form of locality and the CBP, and can still express a wide variety of languages, while being one simple predicate away from the expressive power of FO[ARB]. The counting ability of FO[≤, FIN] is studied as an application.

Given two families of sets F and G, the F-separability problem for G asks whether for two given sets U, V in G there exists a set S in F, such that U is included in S and V is disjoint with S. We consider two families of sets F: modular sets S which are subsets of N^d, defined as unions of equivalence classes modulo some natural number n in N, and unary sets, which extend modular sets by requiring equality below a threshold n, and equivalence modulo n above n. Our main result is decidability of modular- and unary-separability for the class G of reachability sets of Vector Addition Systems, Petri Nets, Vector Addition Systems with States, and for sections thereof.

XML schema validation can be performed in constant memory in the streaming model if and only if the schema admits only trees of bounded depth - an acceptable assumption from the practical view-point. In this paper we refine this analysis by taking into account that data can be streamed block-by-block, rather then letter-by-letter, which provides opportunities to speed up the computation by parallelizing the processing of each block. For this purpose we introduce the model of streaming circuits, which process words of arbitrary length in blocks of fixed size, passing constant amount of information between blocks. This model allows us to transfer fundamental results about the circuit complexity of regular languages to the setting of streaming schema validation, which leads to effective constructions of streaming circuits of depth logarithmic in the block size, or even constant under certain assumptions on the input schema. For nested-relational DTDs, a practically motivated class of bounded-depth XML schemas, we provide an efficient construction yielding constant-depth streaming circuits with particularly good parameters.

We consider two-variable first-order logic on finite words with a fixed number of quantifier alternations. We show that all languages with a neutral letter definable using the order and finite-degree predicates are also definable with the order predicate only. From this result we derive the separation of the alternation hierarchy of two-variable logic on this signature. Replacing finite-degree by arbitrary numerical predicates in the statement would entail a long standing conjecture on the circuit complexity of the addition function. Thus, this result can be viewed as a uniform version of this circuit lower bound.

We study Monadic Second-Order Logic (MSO) over finite words, extended with (non-uniform arbitrary) monadic predicates. We show that it defines a class of languages that has algebraic, automata-theoretic and machine-independent characterizations. We consider the regularity question: given a language in this class, when is it regular? To answer this, we show a substitution property and the existence of a syntactical predicate.We give three applications. The first two are to give simple proofs of the Straubing and Crane Beach Conjectures for monadic predicates, and the third is to show that it is decidable whether a language defined by an MSO formula with morphic predicates is regular.

We consider first order formulae over the signature consisting of the symbols of the alphabet, the symbol < (interpreted as a linear order) and the set MOD of modular numerical predicates. We study the expressive power of FO^2[<,MOD], the two-variable first order logic over this signature, interpreted over finite words. We give an algebraic characterization of the corresponding regular languages in terms of their syntactic morphisms and we also give simple unambiguous regular expressions for them. It follows that one can decide whether a given regular language is captured by FO^2[<,MOD]. Our proofs rely on a combination of arguments from semigroup theory (stamps), model theory (Ehrenfeucht-Fraïssé games) and combinatorics.