Theory of Automata: Arto Salomaa 263 pages, diagrams, 5 [formula omitted] x 8 [formula omitted] in. Oxford, New York, Pergamon Press, 1969. Price, £4·50; $12.00.

Abstract

We discuss the computational complexity of context-free languages, concentrating on two well-known structural properties—immunity and pseudorandomness. An infinite language is REG-immune (resp., CFL-immune) if it contains no infinite subset that is a regular (resp., context-free) language. We prove that (i) there is a context-free REG-immune language outside REG/n and (ii) there is a REG-bi-immune language that can be computed deterministically using logarithmic space. We also show that (iii) there is a CFL-simple set, where a CFL-simple language is an infinite context-free language whose complement is CFL-immune. Similar to the REG-immunity, a REG-primeimmune language has no polynomially dense subsets that are also regular. We further prove that (iv) there is a context-free language that is REG/n-bi-primeimmune. Concerning pseudorandomness of context-free languages, we show that (v) CFL contains REG/n-pseudorandom languages. Finally, we prove that (vi) against REG/n, there exists an almost 1–1 pseudorandom generator computable in nondeterministic pushdown automata equipped with a write-only output tape and (vii) against REG, there is no almost 1–1 weakly pseudorandom generator computable deterministically in linear time by a single-tape Turing machine.