Abstract
Pushdown automata may contain transitions that are never used in any accepting run of the automaton. We present an algorithm for detecting such useless transitions. A finite automaton that captures the possible stack content during runs of the pushdown automaton, is first constructed in a forward procedure to determine which transitions are reachable, and then employed in a backward procedure to determine which of these transitions can lead to a final state. An implementation of the algorithm is shown to exhibit a favorable performance.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 104612 |
Pages (from-to) | 1-12 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Information and Computation |
Volume | 279 |
Early online date | 7 Aug 2020 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Aug 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Javier Esparza proposed the alternative approach using pre? and post?. J?rg Endrullis provided a useful suggestion for the efficient implementation of this alternative approach.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier Inc.
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
Funding
Javier Esparza proposed the alternative approach using pre? and post?. J?rg Endrullis provided a useful suggestion for the efficient implementation of this alternative approach.
Keywords
- Finite automaton
- Pushdown automaton
- Useless transition