{"type":"ScholarlyArticle","title":"Learning Regular Languages via Alternating Automata","authors":[{"name":"Dana Angluin","slug":"dana-angluin","given":"Dana","family":"Angluin","affiliation":""},{"name":"Sarah Eisenstat","slug":"sarah-eisenstat","given":"Sarah","family":"Eisenstat","affiliation":""},{"name":"Dana Fisman","slug":"dana-fisman","given":"Dana","family":"Fisman","affiliation":""}],"abstract":"Nearly all algorithms for learning an unknown regular language, in particular the popular L* algorithm, yield deterministic finite automata. It was recently shown that the ideas of L* can be extended to yield non-deterministic automata, and that the respective learning algorithm, NL*, outperforms L* on randomly generated regular expressions. We conjectured that this is due to the existential nature of regular expressions, and NL* might not outperform L* on languages with a universal nature. In this paper we introduce UL* — a learning algorithm for universal automata (the dual of non-deterministic automata); and AL* — a learning algorithm for alternating automata (which generalize both universal and non-deterministic automata). Our empirical results illustrate the advantages and trade-offs among L*, NL*, UL* and AL*.","doi":null,"url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2015/466","pdf":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2015/0466.pdf","markdown":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2015/466.md","bibtex":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2015/bibtex/466","volume":{"slug":"2015","title":"Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence","short_title":"IJCAI 2015","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2015/","year":2015,"location":"Buenos Aires, Argentina","dates":"25–31 July 2015","editors":"Qiang Yang and Michael Wooldridge","isbn":"978-1-57735-738-4","publisher":"International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence","doi_prefix":""},"section":"Special Track on Machine Learning","track":"Special Track on Machine Learning","number":466,"pages":{"first":3308,"last":3313},"keywords":[],"videos":[],"references":[],"license_note":"Copyright International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence."}