The Pumping Lemma, in poetic form
“Any regular language L has a magic number p
And any long-enough word in L has the following property:
Amongst its first p symbols is a segment you can find
Whose repetition or omission leaves x amongst its kind.”
“So if you find a language L which fails this acid test,
And some long word you pump becomes distinct from all the rest,
By contradiction you have shown that language L is not
A regular guy, resiliant to the damage you have wrought.”
“But if, upon the other hand,x stays within its L ,
Then either L is regular, or else you chose not well.
For w is xyz, and cannot be null,
And y must come before p symbols have been read in full.”
“As mathematical postscript, an addendum to the wise:
The basic proof we outlined here does certainly generalize.
So there is a pumping lemma for all languages context-free,
Although we do not have the same for those that are r.e.”
By Martin Cohn and Harry Mairson
1 comment:
I really enjoyed the poem. I'll have to work in a reference to future instances of this course.
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