Formal Languages and Computation

This book is intended for a one-term introductory course in formal language theory at the junior level. It maintains a balance between a theoretical and practical approach to this subject. From a theoretical viewpoint, it introduces rudimental formal-language-defining models. Based on these models, it demonstrates the concepts, methods, and techniques for formal languages with enough rigor to make them clear and valid. It also sketches the mathematical foundations of computation and related topics, such as computational complexity. Simultaneously, however, from a practical point of view, this book describes how to apply the language models in the techniques concerning the analysis of languages.