Introduction to Automata Theory, Formal Languages and Computation

1

Basic Terminology

Introduction

In the automata theory, we have to deal with some mathematical preliminaries. As examples in finite automata and finite state machine the knowledge of set theory is necessary, in grammar and language section we need the basic knowledge of alphabet, string, and substring, and in the regular expression chapter we need the concept of prefix, suffix, etc. The knowledge of the basic operations on a set such as union, intersection, difference, Cartesian product, power set, and concatenation product are required throughout the syllabus of formal language and automata theory.

For this reason, in this chapter, we shall discuss some basic terminologies related to mathematics which are required for automata theory.

1.1  Basics ...