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CS314: FORMAL LANGUAGES

AND AUTOMATA THEORY
TA. HANOUF ALJLAYL
Chapter 2 - Tutorial

Exercise 2.1
2

Recall the CFG G4 that we gave in Example 2.4. For convenience, let's
rename its variables with single letters as follows.

Give parse trees and derivations for each string.

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Solution 2.1
3

a. The derivation is .

b. The derivation is E E + T T + T F + T
a + T a + F a + a.

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Solution 2.1
4

c. The derivation is +
+ + + + +
+ + + + +
+ + + + + +
.

d. The derivation is () ()
() (()) (()) (()) (()).

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Exercise 2.3
5

Answer each part for the following context-free grammar G.

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Solution 2.3
6

a.

b.

c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
h.

The variables of G
are , , , .
The terminals of G are , .
The start variable is R.
Strings in G are ab, ba, and aab.
Strings not in G are a, b, and .
False.
True.
False.

i.

j.
k.
l.
m.

n.
o.

True.
True.
False.
True.
True.
False.
L(G) is the language of all
strings w over {a, b} such
that w is not palindrome.

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Exercise 2.4
7

Give context-free grammars that generate the following languages. In

all parts the alphabet is {0,1}.

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Solution 2.4
8

a. 111
0 1
b. 00 11
0 1
c. 0 1 00 01 10 | 11
d. 0 | 00 01 10 | 11

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Exercise 2.6
9

Give context-free grammars generating the following languages.

Solution

a. |

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Exercise 2.9
10

Give a context-free grammar that generates the language

Is your grammar ambiguous? Why or why not?

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Solution 2.9
11

Let = (, , , ), where = {, , , , }, = {, , } and R

consists of the following rules.
|
|
|
|
|

The context-free grammar G is ambiguous. Because we have two

different derivations. and

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Exercise 2.13
12

a.

Let G = (V, Z, R, S) be the following grammar. V = {S, T, U}; Y {0, #}; and R
is the set of rules:

Describe L(G) in English.

Solution

L(G) is a set of strings of 0s and #s that either contain exactly 2 #s and any
number of 0s, or contain exactly 1 # and the number of 0s to the right of the # is
twice the of 0s to the left.

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Exercise 2.14
13

Convert the following CFG into an equivalent CFG in Chomsky normal

form, using the procedure given in Theorem 2.9.

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Solution 2.14
14

The equivalent CFG in Chomsky normal form is:

0 BA1 | AB | BA | B1 B1 | BB |
BA1 | AB | BA | B1 B1 | BB
B1 B1
B1 0
A1

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Solution 2.14 Details

15

Step 1: add new start symbol.

0
BAB | B |
00 |

Step 2: remove from right-hand-side of rules.

S0 A
A BAB | AB | BA A B |
B 00

S0 A |
A BAB | AB | BA A B |
B 00

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Solution 2.14 Details

16

Step 3: remove the unit rules.

S0 A |
A BAB | AB | BA A 00 |
B 00

S0 BAB | AB | BA A 00 | |
A BAB | AB | BA A 00 |
B 00

Step 4: convert it to a proper form.

0 BA1 | AB | BA | B1 B1 | BB |
BA1 | AB | BA | B1 B1 | BB
B1 B1
B1 0
A1

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