Problem Solving in Automata, Languages, and Complexity

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4.3


TURING MACHINES

(a) Consider the language L1 over the alphabet (C U {B}) x F, where

F is the set of all partial functions from Qr to &I, with w =

[so, go] [sl, gr] l l. [s,, gn] E L1 if and only if for all i = 0,... , n,

gi = fi, with respect to machine M and string sosl.. ‘sn. (Note:

If IQ11 = m. then there are at most UP+’ symbols in F, each


encodes one partial function from &I to Ql.) Show that there

is a read-only DTM Ml that accepts L1; that is, show that a

read-only DTM can check whether each symbol gi stored at the

second track of cell Ci encodes correctly the function fi. [Hint:

Ml cannot simulate M step-by-step to check whether the values

fi (4) are correct, because Ml does not have a pebble and so once it

leaves cell Ci, it cannot remember where it is. Instead, Ml needs

only to check the consistency of the function ji with its neighbors

fi-1 and fi+l, similar to the problem of checking the consistency

of neighboring crossing sequences in Theorem 4.10.1

(b) Let L2 be the language over the alphabet (C U {B}) x F such

that w = [SO, go] [sl, gl] l l l [s,, gn] E L2 if (1) w E Ll defined in

part (a) above, and (2) the one-pebble DTM M accepts the input

tot1 l l l tn, where t; = si if si # B and ti = & if si = B. Show that

there is a read-only DTM M2 accepting L2. [Hint: M2 uses the

information g; to simulate M as follows: If M holds the pebble in

its state (i.e., if M is in a state q*), then M2 simulates M step-

by-step. If M puts down the pebble in Cell Ci, then M2 uses gi

at the second track to determine the state it will change to when

it returns to cell Ci.]

(c) Show that if M is a one-pebble DTM, then L(M) is regular. [Hint:

Show that the language L(M) is the image of a homomorphism 4

on L2; see Example 2.35.1

. We consider another extension of read-only DTM’s. A DTM M is called

a read/erase-only DTM if it can, at each move, only read an input

symbol and/or erase it (i.e., replace the original symbol by B). That is,

a DTM M = (Q, C, I’, S, s) is a read/erase-only DTM if I’ = C U {B},

and the transition function S satisfies the following property: For any

4 E Q and a E C U {B}, 6(a,a) is either (p,a, D) or (p,B, D) for some

p E Q and D E {L,R}.


(a) Show that there exists a read/erase-only DTM that accepts the

language L = {unbncn 1 n > - 0).

* (b) Show that there exists a Turing-decidable language that is not

accepted by any read/erase-only DTM.

Multi-Tape Turing Machines


In this section, we extend one-tape Turing machines to multi-tape Turing ma-

chines and show that although these extended machines are more convenient
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