Technical Report: DCC-2005-04

On the Representation of Finite Automata

 Marco Almeida and Nelma Moreira and RogĂ©rio Reis

DCC-FC & LIACC, Universidade do Porto
R. do Campo Alegre 823, 4150-180 Porto, Portugal
Phone: 351 22 6078830, Fax: 351 22 6003654
E-mail: mfa@alunos.dcc.fc.up.pt, {nam,rvr}@ncc.up.pt
  April 2005

Abstract

We give an unique string representation, up to isomorphism, for initially connected deterministic finite automata (ICDFA's) with n states over an alphabet of k symbols. We show how to generate all these strings for each n and k, and how its enumeration provides an alternative way to obtain the exact number of ICDFA's.