Permutations of context-free, ET0L and indexed languages

Abstract

For a language $L$, we consider its cyclic closure, and more generally the language $C^{k}(L)$, which consists of all words obtained by partitioning words from $L$ into $k$ factors and permuting them. We prove that the classes of ET0L and EDT0L languages are closed under the operators $C^k$. This both sharpens and generalises Brandstädt's result that if $L$ is context-free then $C^{k}(L)$ is context-sensitive and not context-free in general for $k \geq 3$. We also show that the cyclic closure of an indexed language is indexed.

Keywords

• cyclic closure
• context-free
• et0l
• edt0l
• indexed
• [info.info-dm] computer science [cs]/discrete mathematics [cs.dm]