An introduction to finite automata and their connection to logic

Howard Straubing (1) , Pascal Weil (2)

1 BC - Boston College
2 LaBRI - Laboratoire Bordelais de Recherche en Informatique

This is a tutorial on finite automata. We present the standard material on determinization and minimization, as well as an account of the equivalence of finite automata and monadic second-order logic. We conclude with an introduction to the syntactic monoid, and as an application give a proof of the equivalence of first-order definability and aperiodicity.

Domaines: Théorie et langage formel [cs.FL]; Logique en informatique [cs.LO]

Howard Straubing, Pascal Weil. An introduction to finite automata and their connection to logic. Deepak D'Souza, Priti Shankar. Modern applications of automata theory, World Scientific, pp.3-43, 2012, IISc Research Monographs. ⟨hal-00541028v2⟩