Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science (Sep 2013)

Simulation of Two-Way Pushdown Automata Revisited

  • Robert Glück

DOI
https://doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.129.15
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 129, no. Festschrift for Dave Schmidt
pp. 250 – 258

Abstract

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The linear-time simulation of 2-way deterministic pushdown automata (2DPDA) by the Cook and Jones constructions is revisited. Following the semantics-based approach by Jones, an interpreter is given which, when extended with random-access memory, performs a linear-time simulation of 2DPDA. The recursive interpreter works without the dump list of the original constructions, which makes Cook's insight into linear-time simulation of exponential-time automata more intuitive and the complexity argument clearer. The simulation is then extended to 2-way nondeterministic pushdown automata (2NPDA) to provide for a cubic-time recognition of context-free languages. The time required to run the final construction depends on the degree of nondeterminism. The key mechanism that enables the polynomial-time simulations is the sharing of computations by memoization.