We examine the succinctness of one-way, rotating, sweeping, and two-way deterministic finite automata (1dfas, rdfas, sdfas, 2dfas). Here, a sdfa is a 2dfa whose head can change direction only on the endmarkers and a rdfa is a sdfa whose head is reset on the left end of the input every time the right endmarker is read. We introduce a list of language operators and study the corresponding closure properties of the size complexity classes defined by these automata. Our conclusions reveal the logical structure of certain proofs of known separations in the hierarchy of these classes and allow us to systematically construct alternative problems to witness these separations.
Christos A. Kapoutsis, Richard Královic, To