KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA

Ministry of Higher Education

Northern Borders University
College of Science and Arts
Department of Computer Sciences and Information
Technology

Theory of Computation

instructor :Ammar Mohammed Ali

introduction

 Two main parts of Theory

Computability Theory
•

What are the fundamental capabilities and limitations of

? computers ? What can(not) computers solve

Complexity Theory
•

? What can be solved given limited resources of time and space

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introduction
 Mathematics is the language of science, it is certainly the
language of the theory of computation.

 The mathematics employed in the theory of computation

is different from mathematics used in other applied
disciplines .

 The language of mathematics deals with:

 Sets.
 Statements about objects and the relations between them.
 Alphabets and language.
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Mathematical Notions and Terminology
 Sets : Set, element, subset, proper subset, power set, infinite set,
natural numbers, integers, empty set, union of sets, intersection of
sets, complement of a set, Venn diagrams.

 Functions and Relations : Function (mapping), domain, range, onto

function, arguments of a function, unary function, binary function,
infix notation, prefix notation, predicate ( property), relation, binary
relation, equivalence relation (reflexive, symmetric and transitive).

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Mathematical Notions and Terminology
 Graphs : Undirected graph, nodes ,edges, degree of a node, labeled
graph, subgraph, path, simple path, connected graph, cycle, simple
cycle, tree, root of a tree, leaves of a tree, directed graph, outdegree,
indegree, directed path, strongly connected graph.

 Boolean Logic : Boolean logic, boolean values (True and False),

boolean operations, negation (NOT), conjunction (AND), disjunction
(OR), operands of an operation, exclusive OR (XOR), equality,
implication, distributive law.

 Strings and Languages : Alphabet, symbols of alphabet, string over

an alphabet, length of a string, empty string, reverse of a string,
substring, concatenation, language,

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Alphabets and language

 In computational practice, data are encoded as strings of

bits or other symbols appropriate for manipulation by a
computer.

 Therefore the theory of computation begin by

understanding the mathematics of strings of symbols.

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Alphabets and language
Alphabets:

a finite set of symbols. We denote it by ∑. For example:

∑ 1= { a, b, c, d, …, z } : the set of (lowercase) letters in
English
∑ 2 = { 0, 1, …, 9 } : the set of (base 10) digits.
∑ 3 = {0,1} binary alphabet

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Alphabets and language
 Power of an alphabets
If ∑ is an alphabet , we can express the set of all strings of a
certain length from that alphabet by using an exponential
notation, denoted by ∑k

 Forexample if = {0 ,1} then:

}1 , 0{ =1 ∑
}11 ,10 , 01 ,00{ =2 ∑
}..……{ =3 ∑

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Alphabets and language

String:

 A string over alphabet ∑ is a finite sequence of symbols in ∑. For

example: the strings over the alphabet {a, b} are: a, baa, aab and
aabba

 Strings are usually denoted using the letters from the ending portion in
English alphabet, for example, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z etc.

 The length of a string x over ∑ is the number of symbols in the string,

and we denote this number by |x|. For example,:
|a| = 1, |baa| = |aab| = 3 and |aabba| = 5.

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Alphabets and language

 The null string or empty string

 Is the string of length 0. We denote it by (epsilon), or λ
(lowercase Greek Lambda), or Λ (uppercase Greek
Lambda).

For any alphabet S, the set of all strings over ∑ is


denoted by ∑ *.For example, for ∑ = {a, b}, we have
∑ * = {a, b}* = { , a, b, aa, ab, bb, ba, aaa, aab, aba,
…}

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Alphabets and language
 Concatenation
 Two strings over the same alphabet can be combined
to form a third string.

 If x and y are elements of ∑ *, the concatenation of x and

y is the string xy formed by writing the symbols of x and
the symbols of y consecutively. Formally w = x о y For
example:
if x = abb and y = ba, then
w (xy) = x о y = abbba
w (yx) = y о x = baabb.
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Alphabets and language
 Substring
 A string v is a substring of another string w if and only
if there are strings x and y (either or both of which may be
null), such that w = xvy.

 A prefix of a string is an initial substring. For example,

the prefixes of aba are ɛ (which is a prefix of ever
string), a, ab and aba.

 A suffix is a final substring

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Alphabets and language
Language:
 Any set of strings over an alphabet .Languages are usually
denoted by L.

 A few examples of languages over ∑ are:

L1 = { , a, b, aa, ab, bb, ba}
*L2 = { ab, bab }* U { b }{ bb }
L3 = { x {a, b}* | |x| ≤ 10}
L4 = { x {a, b}* | |x| is odd}

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Alphabets and language
 ∑ * is a language for any alphabet ∑ .

 , the empty or null language, is a language over any alphabet. A null

language means that there is no string in that language.

 {}, the language consisting of only the empty string, is also a

language over any alphabet.

 Note that ≠ {}; the former has no strings and the latter has one string.

 As the set of all strings over ∑ is ∑ *, therefore, a language over ∑ is

a subset of ∑ *. That is,: L Í ∑ *

 The only important constraint on what can be a language is that all

alphabets are finite.
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Alphabets and language
 Languages are sets, and so one way of constructing new
languages from existing ones is to use set operations.
• Union
• Intersection
• Difference

 For two languages L1 and L2 over the alphabet ∑,

L1 ∪ L2, L1 ∩ L2, and L1 − L2 are also languages over ∑.

If L ⊆ ∑*, then by the complement of L we will mean

∑*−L
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Alphabets and language
 Concatenation of language:

If L1 and L2 are language over ∑ , their concatenation is

L = L1о L2 (L = L1L2), where
L = {w ∑* : w = x о y for some x L1 and y L2}

 For example, if ∑ = {0, 1 } , L1 = {w ∑*: w has an even number of

0’s} ,L2 = {w : w starts with a 0 the rest of the symbols are 1’s} ,
then :
L1 L2 ={ w : w has an odd number of 0’s}

 Concatenation is an associative operation; that is, (xy)z = x(yz), for

all possible strings x, y, and z.
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Alphabets and language
 For any language L, we define L n as follows:
L 0 = {},
L n+1 = L nL.
 Kleene ∗-closure :
 Is a unary operation, either on sets of strings or on sets of symbols or
characters.
 Instring is the set of all strings obtained by concatenating zero or more
strings from L, denoted by L*
L* = {w ∑* : w = w1 о w2 о...о wk for some k ≥ 0 and some w1 ,w2,.. wk L}

 For example, if L = {01 , 1 , 100} then 110001110011 L*

L∗=L0∪L1∪L2∪...∪Ln∪....

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Alphabets and language

 The Kleene +-closure:

L + of L is the infinite union, L + = L 1 ∪ L 2 ∪ . . . ∪ L n
∪..

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