Deterministic and Unambiguous Families within Recognizable Two-dimensional Languages

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Anselmo, Marcella | Giammarresi, Dora | Madonia, Maria

Affiliations: Dip. di Informatica ed Applicazioni, Universit`a di Salerno. I-84084 Fisciano (SA) Italy. E-mail: anselmo@dia.unisa.it | Dip. Matematica, Università di Roma "Tor Vergata", via Ricerca Scientifica, 00133 Roma, Italy. E-mail: giammarr@mat.uniroma2.it | Dip. Matematica e Informatica, Università di Catania, Viale Andrea Doria 6/a, 95125 Catania, Italy. E-mail: madonia@dmi.unict.it

Abstract: Recognizable two-dimensional languages (REC) are defined by tiling systems that generalize to two dimensions non-deterministic finite automata for strings. We introduce the notion of deterministic tiling system and the corresponding family of languages (DREC) and study its structural and closure properties. Furthermore we show that, in contrast with the one-dimensional case, there exist other classes between deterministic and non-deterministic families that we separate by means of examples and decidability properties.

Keywords: Automata and Formal Languages, Unambiguity, Determinism, Tiling Systems, Twodimensional languages

DOI: 10.3233/FI-2010-221

Journal: Fundamenta Informaticae, vol. 98, no. 2-3, pp. 143-166, 2010