Handbook of Formal Languages: Volume 1. Word, Language, Grammar [Hardcover]

Grzegorz Rozenberg (Editor), Arto Salomaa (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 11, 1997

This first volume of the Handbook of Formal Languages gives a comprehensive authoritative exposition on the core of language theory. Grammars, codes, power series, L systems, and combinatorics on words are all discussed in a thorough, yet self-contained manner. This is perhaps the most informative single volume in the history of theoretical computer science.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 873 pages
• Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (April 11, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3540604200
• ISBN-13: 978-3540604204
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,120,080 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brings together three themes with interesting side trips., July 26, 2004

By 

J. COLBY "CS Ph.D. survivor [with amnesia]" (Santa Cruz, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Handbook of Formal Languages: Volume 3. Beyond Words (Hardcover)

As a Ph.D. candidate working in parsing and interested in model-theoretic syntax, I have found this book to be very useful. I have become very interested in the relation between languages, automata and logic, and how they relate to parsing and deduction. This handbook presents these things with some extra tidbits in chapters which from what I have read - I haven't read the whole book - are well-written and accessible. And the authors point out connections between each other's work.

What is especially interesting to me is the focus on languages where the chosen models are not strings, but instead trees, graphs, etc. For example, my present work is about semiring parsing, with tree automata as the operational model. I am interested in applying parsing as deduction to models which are arbitrary classes of graphs described by grammars written as formulas in some logic. Having recently bought this handbook for future reference, I was delighted to find a very accessible and useful chapter on tree automata which related to work I just started.

For my interests, the chapters on graph grammars, term rewriting and on automata, languages and logic are also enticing and I look forward to reading them as well. The other chapters aren't central to my own work, but I also look forward to reading them, for they seem interesting.

I encourage any researcher working with languages, whether they be artificial ones like XML trees, graphs representing networks or proofs, or they are natural languages, who would like to enter the new millenium to read this book as well as the other volumes of the Handbook of Formal Languages.