automata

Automata is a GAP package with algorithms to deal with automata.

Introduction

This is release 1.15 of the package automata.

The features of this package include

     - computing a rational expression for the language recognized by a
       finite automaton;
     - compute an automaton for the language given by a rational
       expression;
     - minimalize a finite automaton;
     - has some features (using the external program GraphViz) to
       visualize automata;

There is a manual in the sub-directory doc written using the GAP package gapdoc which describes the available functions in detail. The dvi, pdf, html versions of the manual are also available there.

The current maintainers of the package are:

Manuel Delgado   <mdelgado@fc.up.pt>
Steve Linton     <steve.linton@st-andrews.ac.uk>

If you have found important features missing or if there is a bug, we would appreciate it very much if you send us an email.

Contents

With this version you should have obtained the following files and directories:

File/directory	Description
README.md	this file
EXAMPLES	some examples
CHANGES	changelog
LICENSE	Licensing information
doc	the manual
gap	the GAP code
tst	a test file
init.g	the file that initializes this package
read.g	the file that reads in the package
PackageInfo.g	information file for automatic processing
version	the version number

Usage

The package shall be distributed with the main GAP archive. In this case, in order to use it you just have to start GAP and type

  LoadPackage( "automata" );

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For updates between releases of GAP itself or in case it is not distributed with the main GAP archive, check the package Web page

https://gap-packages.github.io/automata/

For the development version, please visit the repository in GitHub (https://github.com/gap-packages/automata/)

You may get automata as a compressed tar archive (file name ends with .tar.gz). Use the appropriate command on your system to unpack the archive.

On UNIX systems the compressed tar archive may be unpacked by

tar xzf automata-<version>.tar.gz

or, if tar on your system does not understand the option z, by

gunzip automata-<version>.tar.gz
tar xf automata-<version>.tar

which will in each case unpack the code into a directory automata in the current directory. We assume that the current directory is the directory /usr/local/lib/gap-4.x.x/pkg/.

Installation

You may have to start GAP with the -l option, for instance,

gap -l "/usr/local/lib/gap-4.x.x"

Then try the following

gap> LoadPackage( "automata" ); 
true
gap>

Good luck!

If you use a LINUX system, you may have to, in order to save typing, write aliases:

in the file .bashrc (or something equivalent, maybe with another syntax):

alias gap='gap -l "/usr/local/lib/gap-4.x.x;"'

and in the file .gap/gaprc

LoadPackage( "automata" ); 

In order to have automatic visualisations and not just to produce the dot code to be visualised by any other means, GraphViz (https://www.graphviz.org/) should be installed.

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In other systems, there are equivalent ways to do the same.

Automata is free software you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. For details, see the file GPL distributed as part of this package or see the FSF's own site.