Transducers, Part B: Rational Functions

lax-132576·formalized by Mikołaj Bojańczyk · Aristotle (Harmonic)·registered·created ·GitHub @0257c90·Lean v4.33.0 epoch · mathlib db584cd6d46c

Loading review…

Sign in with ORCID

Community review

Flags

Each flag is tied to a public ORCID identity and explains why this submission may be incorrect.

No flags have been submitted.

    Community review

    Flag this submission

    State precisely what appears incorrect. This explanation will be public under your ORCID name.

    Abstract

    Part B of the book Transducers (M. Bojańczyk) as concepts and proofs: the rational relations and the rational functions, one step up the transducer ladder from Mealy machines. The Lean development is Aristotle's formalisation of the book, re-presented in the archive's form; it requires the Part A submission for continuity, Mealy machines and the composition closure, and assumes the undecidability of the Post correspondence problem from the archive's submission on it.

    The definition-concepts are the automata with labelled transitions that underlie the two nondeterministic models, nondeterministic automata with output and the rational relations (B.1.1, B.1.2), rational functions (B.2.1), string homomorphisms, bimachines (B.2.2), the prime rational functions of Theorem B.2.6, finite codes of automata and decidability under a promise, weighted automata (B.3.2) and their codes over Q\mathbb{Q}, sequential and subsequential transducers, the left distance (B.4.7) with bounded variation, and automata with extended transitions.

    The theorem-concepts are the numbered results of Part B: closure of rational relations under composition and their continuity (B.1.4, B.1.5), the undecidability of their equivalence (B.1.6, Griffiths) with the rationality of the complement of a homomorphism (B.1.7), Eilenberg's theorem that rational functions, unambiguous automata and bimachines coincide (B.2.3, as three implications and their conjunction), the elimination of ε\varepsilon-transitions (B.2.4, in its two forms), uniformisation (B.2.5), the decomposition into prime rational functions (B.2.6, both directions and the biconditional), which rational functions are Mealy machines (B.2.7), Schützenberger's decidability of equivalence and of zeroness for weighted automata over Q\mathbb{Q} (B.3.3, B.3.7), decidable equivalence of rational functions (B.3.4), closure of weighted automata under pre-composition with rational functions and the resulting characterisation (B.3.5, B.3.6), and the machine-independent characterisations of Mealy machines (B.4.1, with its decidability B.4.2, B.4.3, B.4.4, B.4.5), of sequential functions (B.4.6, Ginsburg–Rose), of subsequential functions (B.4.8, Choffrut) and of rational functions (B.4.13, Reutenauer–Schützenberger). All are proved.

    Decidability statements are about finite codes of automata over the alphabet N\mathbb{N} and are relativised to the letters a code mentions, since no code describes a total function on all of N\mathbb{N}^*. Definition B.1.3 (rational and recognisable subsets of a monoid) is not formalised; Claims B.4.9–B.4.12 are internal steps of B.4.8 and appear only inside its proof. The exercises of Part B are not part of this submission.

    In the paper

    Concepts

    Concept map
    48 concepts; 34 descendants hidden
    100%
    Rational functions are computed bybimachinesBimachinesElimination of ε-transitions, with extendedtransitionsElimination of ε-transitions for finitelyvalued relationsExtended transitions and the elimination ofε-transitionsThe complement of a homomorphism isrationalAutomata with labelled transitionsLeft distance and bounded variationDeciding length preservation of a rationalfunctionLength preserving rational functions havelength preserving automataLength preservation through a typing of thestatesDeciding whether a rational function is aMealy machineMachine-independent characterisation ofMealy machinesThe prime rational functionsRational functions decompose into primerational functionsRational relations are closed undercompositionRational relations are continuousDecidable equivalence of rational functionsEquivalence of rational relations isundecidableRational functionsMachine-independent characterisation ofrational functionsWhich rational functions are Mealy machinesBimachines compute rational functionsCompositions of prime rational functions arerationalFunctions that weighted automata can bepre-composed with are rationalThe rational functions are the compositionsof prime rational functionsNondeterministic automata with output andrational relationsEilenberg's theorem: rational functions,unambiguous automata and bimachinesRational functions characterised by weightedautomataMachine-independent characterisation ofsequential functionsSequential transducersString homomorphismsMachine-independent characterisation ofsubsequential functionsSubsequential transducersCodes of automata with output, anddecidability under a promiseRational functions are computed byunambiguous automataUniformisation of total rational relationsWeighted automataCodes of weighted automata over therationalsDecidable equivalence of weighted automataover the rationalsWeighted automata are closed underpre-composition with rational functionsDecidable zeroness of weighted automataover the rationalsClosure of a family of functions undercompositionContinuous string-to-string functionsPrefix preservation and length preservationMealy machinesPrime Mealy machines: reversible andflip-flopState transformations of a pre-automaton
    Proven claimDefinitionThis submissionOther submissionA → B: B builds on A

    Proofs

    Proof networkview on GitHub

    100%
    assumptions conclusionProven claimClaim from this submission / another submissionProof — open large view for details
    Proof list

    Lean sources for these proofs: proofs/ on GitHub

    Proof code is not displayed; the archive records each proof's checked relationship between claims.

    Related submissions

    Submission map

    100%
    This submissionOther submissionA → B: B's concepts build on AA → B: only B's proofs build on A

    Cite this

    This is only the formalizers. The authors of the formalized results may be different (see References).

    @misc{lax-132576,
      author = {Mikołaj Bojańczyk and Aristotle (Harmonic)},
      title = {Transducers, Part B: Rational Functions},
      year = {2026},
      howpublished = {Lax Archive, lax-132576},
      url = {https://laxarchive.org/lax-132576/},
    }

    References

    1. Samuel Eilenberg. Automata, Languages, and Machines. Volume A. Academic Press, 1974.
    2. Marcel-Paul Schützenberger. On the Definition of a Family of Automata. Information and Control 4:245–270, 1961. doi:10.1016/S0019-9958(61)80020-X
    3. Timothy V. Griffiths. The Unsolvability of the Equivalence Problem for Λ\Lambda-Free Nondeterministic Generalized Machines. Journal of the ACM 15(3):409–413, 1968. doi:10.1145/321466.321473
    4. Seymour Ginsburg and Gene F. Rose. A Characterization of Machine Mappings. Canadian Journal of Mathematics 18:381–388, 1966. doi:10.4153/CJM-1966-040-3
    5. Christian Choffrut. Une caractérisation des fonctions séquentielles et des fonctions sous-séquentielles en tant que relations rationnelles. Theoretical Computer Science 5(3):325–337, 1977. doi:10.1016/0304-3975(77)90049-4
    6. Christophe Reutenauer and Marcel-Paul Schützenberger. Minimization of Rational Word Functions. SIAM Journal on Computing 20(4):669–685, 1991. doi:10.1137/0220042
    7. Mikołaj Bojańczyk. Transducers. 2026. Book in preparation; sources at https://github.com/bojanczyk/transducer-book.

    Discussion

    Ask a question or add context. Endorsements and structured flags are kept in the review panel above.

    Loading discussion…