CSci 3501 Algorithms and Computability - Lab 12.

Due Wednesday, November 30 at 11:59pm

What to submit and when:

Lab assignment

Work in pairs

Lab overview and goals

The goal of the lab is to get practice with push-down automata, the pumping lemma for context-free languages, and Turing machines.

Task 1: push-down automata (6 points)

Please refer to Constructing a push-down automaton section in JFLAP.

  1. A pushdown automaton for the language of strings a^k followed by any number of b followed by c^k (do not convert your grammar from the previous question into an automaton or vice versa)
  2. A pushdown automaton for the language of strings a^n b^m where n <= m.

Task 2: Play the context-free "pumping lemma game" (7 points)

Use the tutorial for the pumping lemma. Play the "pumping lemma game" for the following examples. For each example state whether the language is context-free; justify it based on which side has a winning strategy in the pumping lemma game. Clearly describe the strategy.

Task 3: Turing machines (12 points)

Use JFLAP tutorial on Turing machines to construct and test a Turing machine that decides the language a^n b^n c^n, where n >= 0.

What to submit


CSci 3501 course web site.