ON THE SYNTHESIS OF FINITE-STATE ACCEPTORS

THE SYNTHESIS OF FINITE-STATE ACCEPTORSbyA. W. Biermann and J. A. FeldmanComputer Science DepartmentStanford UniversityABSTRACT: Two algorithms are presented for solving the followingproblem: Given a finite-set S of strings of symbols,find a finite-state machine which will accept the stringsof S and possibly some additional strings which"resemble" those of S . The approach used is todirectly construct the states and transitions of theacceptor machine from the string information. Thealgorithms include a parameter which enable one toincrease the exactness of the resulting machine'sbehavior as much as desired by increasing the number ofstates in the machine. The properties of the algorithmsare presented and illustrated with a number of examples.The paper gives a method for identifying a finite-statelanguage from a randomly chosen finite subset of thelanguage if the subset is large enough and if a boundis known on the number of states required to recognizethe language. Finally, we discuss some of the uses of thealgorithms and their relationship to the problem ofgranmatical inference.The research reported here was supported in part by the Advanced ResearchProjects Agency of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (SD-183).Reproduced in the USA. Available from the Clearinghouse for FederalScientific and Technical Information, Springfield. Vi-