Regularity Problems for Visibly Pushdown Languages

Vince Bárány (1) , Christof Loeding (2) , Olivier Serre (3)

1 Mathematische Grundlagen der Informatik
2 Lehrstuhl für Informatik VII
3 LIAFA - Laboratoire d'informatique Algorithmique : Fondements et Applications

Visibly pushdown automata are special pushdown automata whose stack behavior is driven by the input symbols according to a partition of the alphabet. We show that it is decidable for a given visibly pushdown automaton whether it is equivalent to a visibly counter automaton, i.e. an automaton that uses its stack only as counter. In particular, this allows to decide whether a given visibly pushdown language is a regular restriction of the set of well-matched words, meaning that the language can be accepted by a finite automaton if only well-matched words are considered as input.

Mots clés: Automata and formal languages

Domaines: Informatique et langage [cs.CL]

Vince Bárány, Christof Loeding, Olivier Serre. Regularity Problems for Visibly Pushdown Languages. 23rd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science, STACS 2006, 2006, Marseille, France. pp.420-431. ⟨hal-00016661⟩