The use of translucent input letters represents a way of implementing a discontinuous input processing in automata. In detail, a translucent automaton performs several sweeps from left to right on the input: according to the current state, some symbols are visible and can be processed, whereas some other symbols are invisible and may be processed in another sweep. We also distinguish between the returning and non-returning mode, which differ in the way the automaton behaves after reading a symbol: in the returning mode, a new sweep starts immediately, while in the non-returning mode, the device processes the next visible symbol. Here, we investigate deterministic pushdown automata with translucent letters both in the returning and non-returning mode. We prove that the non-returning mode strictly outperforms the returning mode, and that the families of the languages accepted by these two types of devices can be ranked strictly between the deterministic context-free languages and the deterministic context-sensitive languages. Moreover, both families are shown to be incomparable to the families of context-free, growing context-sensitive, and Church-Rosser languages. The ability of accepting non-semilinear languages is also emphasized (addressing an open question in the literature). Finally, we study the closure properties of both language families under the Boolean operations, obtaining that they are both closed under complementation but not under union and intersection. Further non-closure results are pointed-out for returning devices.

Exclusive nondeterministic finite automata (XNFA) are nondeterministic finite automata with an exclusive-or-like acceptance condition. An input is accepted if there is exactly one accepting path in its computation tree. If there are none or more than one accepting paths, the input is rejected. It turns out that, from a descriptional complexity point of view, XNFAs differ significantly from the known types of finite automata. In particular the state costs for the simulation of an XNFA by a DFA are states, while the costs for simulating an XNFA by an NFA are states. Both bounds are also shown to be tight. On the other hand, NFAs may have advantages in comparison to XNFAs. For the simulation of an NFA by an XNFA, a tight bound of states is given. Finally, we investigate the computational complexity of different decision problems for XNFAs and it turns out that emptiness, universality, inclusion, and equivalence are PSPACE -complete.

Abstract String assembling systems are biologically inspired mechanisms that generate strings from copies out of finite sets of assembly units. The underlying mechanism is based on piecewise assembly of a double-stranded sequence of symbols, where the upper and lower strand have to match. The generation is additionally controlled by the requirement that the first symbol of a unit has to be the same as the last symbol of the strand generated so far, as well as by the distinction of assembly units that may appear at the beginning, during, or at the end of the assembling process and by a length restriction on the units. We investigate the power of these model-inherent control mechanisms by considering variants where one or more of these mechanisms are relaxed. The generative capacities and the relative power of the variants are our main interest. In particular, we prove that the power gained in the different control mechanisms may yield strictly more powerful systems and incomparable capacities. Additionally, we generalize these systems to multi-stranded systems. We obtain a strong connection to one-way multi-head finite automata and show an infinite, dense, and strict strand hierarchy. Finally, we examine the closure properties of the different variants of string assembling systems.

Input-driven pushdown automata (IDPDAs) are pushdown automata where the next action on the pushdown store (push, pop, nothing) is solely governed by the input symbol. Nowadays such devices are usually defined such that every push operation pushes exactly one additional symbol on the pushdown store and, in addition, stationary moves are not allowed so that the devices work in real time. Here, we relax this strong definition and consider IDPDAs that may push more than one symbol in one step (push-IDPDA) or may perform stationary moves (stat-IDPDA). We study the computational power of the extended variants both in the deterministic and nondeterministic case, we investigate several decidability questions for the new automata classes, and we obtain interesting representations by inverse homomorphisms. Namely, every (1) deterministic, (2) real-time deterministic, and (3) nondeterministic context-free language can be characterized as the inverse homomorphic image of a language accepted by a (1) stat-IDPDA, (2) push-IDPDA, and (3) nondeterministic push-IDPDA.

We study the computational and descriptional complexity of self-verifying pushdown automata (SVPDA) and self-verifying realtime queue automata (SVRQA). A self-verifying automaton is a nondeterministic device whose nondeterminism is symmetric in the following sense. Each computation path can give one of the answers yes, no, or do not know. For every input word, at least one computation path must give either the answer yes or no, and the answers given must not be contradictory. We show that SVPDA and SVRQA are automata characterizations of so-called complementation kernels, that is, context-free or realtime nondeterministic queue automaton languages whose complement is also context free or accepted by a realtime nondeterministic queue automaton. So, the families of languages accepted by SVPDA and SVRQA are strictly between the families of deterministic and nondeterministic languages. Closure properties and various decidability problems are considered. For example, it is shown that it is not semidecidable whether a given SVPDA or SVRQA can be made self-verifying. Moreover, we study descriptional complexity aspects of these machines. It turns out that the size trade-offs between nondeterministic and self-verifying as well as between self-verifying and deterministic automata are non-recursive. That is, one can choose an arbitrarily large recursive function f, but the gain in economy of description eventually exceeds f when changing from the former system to the latter.

In input-driven automata the input alphabet is divided into distinct classes and different actions on the storage medium are solely governed by the input symbols. For example, in input-driven pushdown automata (IDPDA) there are three distinct classes of input symbols determining the action of pushi ng, popping, or doing nothing on the pushdown store. Here, input-driven automata are extended in such a way that the input is preprocessed by a deterministic sequential transducer. IDPDAs extended in this way are called tinput-driven pushdown automata (TDPDA) and it turns out that TDPDAs are more powerful than IDPDAs but still not as powerful as real-time deterministic pushdown automata. Nevertheless, even this stronger model has still good closure and decidability properties. In detail, it is shown that TDPDAs are closed under the Boolean operations union, intersection, and complementation. Furthermore, decidability procedures for the inclusion problem as well as for the questions of whether a given automaton is a TDPDA or an IDPDA are developed. Additionally, representation theorems for the context-free languages using IDPDAs and TDPDAs are established. Two other classes investigated are on the one hand TDPDAs restricted to tinput-driven counter automata and on the other hand TDPDAs generalized to tinput-driven stack automata. In both cases, it is possible to preserve the good closure and decidability properties of TDPDAs, namely, the closure under the Boolean operations as well as the decidability of the inclusion problem.

A k-limited automaton is a linear bounded automaton that may rewrite each tape square only in the first k visits, where k ≥ 0 is a fixed constant. It is known that these automata accept context-free languages only. We investigate deterministic k-limited automata towards their ability to perform rev ersible computations, that is, computations in which every configuration has at most one predecessor. A first result is that, for all k ≥ 0, sweeping k-limited automata accept regular languages only. In contrast to reversible finite automata, all regular languages are accepted by sweeping 0-limited automata. Then we study the computational power gained in the number k of possible rewrite operations. It is shown that the reversible 2-limited automata accept regular languages only and, thus, are strictly weaker than general 2-limited automata. Furthermore, a proper inclusion between reversible 3-limited and 4-limited automata languages is obtained. The next levels of the hierarchy are separated between every k and k + 3 rewrite operations. We investigate closure properties of the family of languages accepted by reversible k-limited automata. It turns out that these families are not closed under intersection, but are closed under complementation. They are closed under intersection with regular languages, which leads to the non-closure under concatenation, iteration, and homomorphisms. Finally, it turns out that all k-limited automata accept Church-Rosser languages only, that is, the intersection between context-free and Church-Rosser languages contains an infinite hierarchy of language families beyond the deterministic context-free languages.

We consider the computational complexity of problems related to partial word automata. Roughly speaking, a partial word is a word in which some positions are unspecified and a partial word automaton is a finite automaton that accepts a partial word language—here the unspecified positions in the wor d are represented by a “hole” symbol ⋄. A partial word language L′ can be transformed into an ordinary language L by using a ⋄-substitution. In particular, we investigate the complexity of the compression or minimization problem for partial word automata, which is known to be NP-hard. We improve on the previously known complexity on this problem, by showing PSPACE-completeness. In fact, it turns out that almost all problems related to partial word automata, such as, e.g., equivalence and universality, are already PSPACE-complete. Moreover, we also study these problems under the further restriction that the involved automata accept only finite languages. In this case, the complexities of the studied problems drop from PSPACE-completeness down to coNP-hardness and containment in ∑2P depending on the problem investigated.

Deterministic finite automata equipped with the storage medium of a queue are investigated towards their ability to perform reversible computations, that is, computations in which every occurring configuration has exactly one successor and exactly one predecessor. A first result is that any queue a utomaton can be simulated by a reversible one. So, reversible queue automata are as powerful as Turing machines. Therefore it is of natural interest to impose time restrictions to queue automata. Here we consider quasi realtime and realtime computations. It is shown that every reversible quasi realtime queue automaton can be sped up to realtime. On the other hand, under realtime conditions reversible queue automata are less powerful than general queue automata. Furthermore, we exhibit a lower bound of Ω(n2log(n)) time steps for realtime queue automata witness languages to be accepted by any equivalent reversible queue automaton. We study the closure properties of reversible realtime queue automata and obtain similar results as for reversible deterministic pushdown automata. Finally, we investigate decidability questions and obtain that all commonly studied questions such as emptiness, finiteness, or equivalence are not semidecidable for reversible realtime queue automata. Furthermore, it is not semidecidable whether an arbitrary given realtime queue automaton is reversible.

Deterministic one-way Turing machines with sublinear space bounds are systematically studied. We distinguish among the notions of strong, weak, and restricted space bounds. The latter is motivated by the study of P automata. The space available on th