Diploma Thesis

Regular Languages and Their Generating Functions: The Inverse Problem

Abstract

The technique of determining a generating function for an unambiguous context-free language, is known as the Schützenberger methodology. For regular languages, Barcucci et al. (1) proposed a technology for inverting this methodology, which allows to give a combinatorial interpretation (by means of a regular expression) of certain positive integer sequences that are defined by a linear recurrence.
In this thesis, we provide an implementation of this inverse methodology in Maple. Therefore, a detailed introduction to the underlying theory, i.e., the theory of formal power series and especially the question of deciding N-rationality, is given. Further, various aspects and problems concerning the implementation are discussed, and some examples from combinatorics illustrate its applicability.

Literature

(1) E. Barcucci, A. Del Lungo, A. Frosini, S. Rinaldi: A technology for reverse-engineering a combinatorial problem from a rational generating function,
Advances in Applied Mathematics, 26, (2001) 129-153.

Christoph Koutschan