Abstract
We study the computational complexity of several decision problems (including the emptiness, disjointness, finiteness, and containment problems) for various restrictions of two-way reversal-bounded multicounter machines (\(2\textsf {NCM}\)). We then apply the results to some problems in coding theory. We examine generalizations of various types of codes with marginal errors; for example, a language L is k-infix-free (\(k \ge 0\)) if there is no non-empty string y in L that is an infix of more than k strings in \(L - \{y\}\). This allows for bounded error versus standard infix-free languages. We show that it is \(\textsf {PSPACE}\)-complete to decide, given k and a \(2\textsf {NCM}\) M whose input is finite-crossing, whether L(M) is not k-infix-free. It follows that the problem is also \(\textsf {PSPACE}\)-complete for one-way nondeterministic and deterministic finite automata (even for the two-way models), answering an open question in [12]. We also look at the complexity of the problem for restricted models of \(2\textsf {NCM}\) and for other types of codes, and improve/generalize some previous results.
The research of I. McQuillan was supported, in part, by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
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Ibarra, O.H., McQuillan, I. (2022). On the Complexity of Decision Problems for Counter Machines with Applications to Coding Theory. In: Diekert, V., Volkov, M. (eds) Developments in Language Theory. DLT 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13257. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05578-2_14
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