MCS 441 Theory of Computation
Study Guide
Midterm 1 will be Friday October 15.
Chapter 1
You should be familiar with the following concepts
- Deterministic and Nondeterministic Finite Automata
- Regular Languages and their closure properties
- Regular Expressions
- Pumping Lemma
You should be able to
- Construct DFA and NFA to recognize languages
- Convert NFA to DFA recognizing same language
- Given a DFA/NFA M find a regular expression R such that L(R)=L(M)
- Given a regular expression find an NFA M with L(R)=L(M)
- Use the pumping lemma to prove that a language is not regular
Chapter 2
You should be familiar with the following concepts
- Context free languages, contex free grammars, derivations, derivation trees
- Pumping Lemma for CFL
- Push down automata
You should be able to
- Construct CFGs to describe languages
- Figure out what language is described by a CFG
- Use the pumping lemma to prove a language is not context free
- Construct PDA to recognize languages
- Given a CFG construct a PDA that recognizes the same language.(This
will not be included on Midterm 1.)
- Given a PDA find a CFG describing the same language (This
will not be included on Midterm 1.)