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L Systems

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Handbook of Formal Languages

Abstract

L systems are parallel rewriting systems which were originally introduced in 1968 to model the development of multicellular organisms [L1]. The basic ideas gave rise to an abundance of language-theoretic problems, both mathematically challenging and interesting from the point of view of diverse applications. After an exceptionally vigorous initial research period (roughly up to 1975; in the book [RSed2], published in 1985, the period up to 1975 is referred to as “when L was young” [RS2]), some of the resulting language families, notably the families of D0L, 0L, DT0L, E0L and ET0L languages, had emerged as fundamental ones in the parallel or L hierarchy. Indeed, nowadays the fundamental L families constitute a similar testing ground as the Chomsky hierarchy when new devices (grammars, automata, etc.) and new phenomena are investigated in language theory.

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  1. Lila Kari
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  2. Grzegorz Rozenberg
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  3. Arto Salomaa
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9512, Leiden, RA, NL-2300, The Netherlands

    Grzegorz Rozenberg

  2. Turku Centre for Computer Science Data City, Turku, FIN-20520, Finland

    Arto Salomaa

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Kari, L., Rozenberg, G., Salomaa, A. (1997). L Systems. In: Rozenberg, G., Salomaa, A. (eds) Handbook of Formal Languages. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-59136-5_5

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