Customer Reviews

Introduction to Formal Languages and Automata

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

A couple of years ago I taught two computability courses during the same semester. One of the courses was in the undergraduate program while the other was in the graduate program. As I was a visitor, I did not have a hand in picking either text. This text had been selected for the undergradate version of the course. At the time, I wrote a review for the book we used for the graduate course saying how much better it was than the Linz book. The Linz book not only covered less material, but it offered poorer explanations. Although I was a visitor, I endeavored to warn succeeding instructors of the undergraduate course against using the Linz book and sincerely hope that it was not used the next year.

A couple of days ago, I received email from someone thinking of using the text for the graduate course asking me to identify the Linz book which I mentioned, but did not identify, in my original review. This request prompted me to write this review. Regardless, the Linz book is a poorly developed and presented text. As there are several superior texts, there is little reason to adopt this one. This book is suitable neither for well-prepared nor ill-prepared students. There is too little material for the well-prepared and insufficient clarity of exposition for the ill-prepared. In all, a poor combination of anemic material and exposition.

This book contains all of the essential information and the author does have a fairly good writing style. However, where it fails is in the title: "An Introduction to ..." If it was intended to be an introduction to automata and formal language it should have a lot more clear explanation and none of the proofs. This book is filled with proofs that no one but a mathematics major could possibly understand. And the proofs aren't even relevant to the fundamental understanding of the concepts.

It is clear that the author isn't writing this book as a tutorial for students, but as a reference for professors. It seems like he is trying to show off his proof-writing ability throughout the book and has no concern for the poor student who might be struggling to understand new concepts. That's why I give it a low rating.

I was lucky to have an excellent instructor for this class so that after her lectures I could read this book and understand most of it. But, it would be almost impossible to learn anything from this book by self study only. So my advice, like others who have posted is: Unless this book is required for a class, don't buy it!

First off, let me say this book did not confuse me. It's just very poorly written. If this was the only Automata book I ever read, my review would not mean as much. On the contrary, I have read 4-5 Automata books and have taught the topic numerous times. I urge teachers and students to avoid this book. If you would like a great book covering this material, get Dexter Kozen's Automata and Computability. That book is so well written and elegant that it puts most of the other books to shame. It is one of the top CS books on my list along with SICP, CLRS, and a few others. In addition, the "OLD" version of Hopcroft and Ullman is pretty good but the newer version with Motwani is bad. Anyways, I hope this helps some of you who are looking for a good book to read.

Peter Linz's "An Introduction to Formal Languages and Automata" does a pretty good job at what the title implies: providing introductory explanations of the field of formal languages and automata. By its nature, some of the concepts in this field are fairly obscure and to follow their power or relevance requires some mathematical training and rigor. (Translation: this stuff can be hard to grasp at first, particularly for students who are not experienced or comfortable with proof-based mathematical discussions.) Being a graduate student, I had the benefit of having significantly more math experience than the undergraduates who typically encounter this material for the first time, so my review may be a little biased towards those with more mathematical training than people likely to be using this book.

In general, the book is clearly written and, while there are a number of errors dotted throughout the text, Peter Linz happily accepts corrections to be integrated into later versions of the book. In the course of reading the book, I found about a dozen errors, with a large concentration of them in Chapter 9.1's introduction to Turing Machines.

This text was the required book for an introductory computer science course at Rensselaer Polytechnic in Fall 2002. I used it in conjunction with Michael Sipser's "Introduction to the Theory of Computation", reading the relevant sections of Sipser's book after reading the introductions provided by Linz. I found Linz to be useful for introducing ideas, but generally lacking in the rigor to drive the point home with mathematical precision. Many times I found Sipser could say more precisely in two pages what Linz did in ten. However, the copious examples and explanation provided by Linz are useful for providing a context for the material being introduced. I think it would be difficult to try to learn directly from Sipser as the presentation there is pretty dense. The combination of the two books served me well in the course.

I was disappointed in the last two chapters of the book, however, which lacked much explanation and spent a lot of time hand-waving. The message of the last two chapters seemed to be "anything that interests you here is beyond the scope of this book." As a result, the chapters probably could have been omitted or replaced with a paragraph that says, "if you want to learn more, read the books listed on page 405."

Bearing in mind that Linz's book is, after all, an introductory text, the lack of rigor can be excused. I found the book thoroughly readable and learned quite a bit of introductory computer science by reading it. I would recommend it to anyone else who is interested in learning a little bit about basic theoretical computer science.

Like most people on this review board, I too had to suffer through this book because of the class "Introduction to Theory of Computing" I had to take to complete my computer science degree. First of all, the cover doesn't have any picture at all, it's hard cover, colorless, generally this kind of books are full of incomprehensible complexities, avoid at all cost if you are a self-learner (unless you are a real nerd theorist and extremely good at mathematics).

Onto the book itself, most of the examples assume you to know everything before hand, take one example : Prove "There does not exist any Turing machine H that behaves as required by Definition 12.1. The halting problem is therefore undecidable." This guy went all the way of constructing various Turing machines on top of each other **without** telling you why he did that and he further applied various "creative" inputs, to the various machines **without** telling you how that worked and he derived a contradiction **so what's the point ?** Looks more like a non-sense fairy tale than a complete satisfying mathematical proof. Some people may argue that you should know the process before hand, and fully understand the chapters preceding the proof, well, sorry, the preceding chapters are bad as well. Not to mention the exorbitant price. If you are not a nerd in math and logic puzzle, this book is not for you, period.

void Read_Linz()
{
...for (int chapter = 1; chapter <= 14; ++chapter)
...{
......int count = 0;
......do {
.........ReadVeryCarefully(chapter);
.........bool confused = true;
.........if (++count == TOO_MANY)
............abort();
......}while (confused);
...}
}

I had to purchase this book for a required class in Computer Science. I don't understand how a book that has soo many bad reviews could be required for a class. I checked some of my answers with the Instructor's solution manual and even the manual was useless. For example, the answer for section 3.2 #1 says "Routine application of a given contruction". NOW, DOES THIS ANSWER HELP YOU? Don't think that this is the only answer like this, most of the answers in the manual are similar. No one even knows who the author's audience is... I think people who buy this book is because it's a requirement. I think that every University that requires this book should think it over.

Contrary to what some other reviewers claim, this book is perfectly suitable as a tutorial and course book for computer science and mathematics students at the academic level. It aims to lay a firm and necessary theoretical groundwork for various fields in software and hardware design. Its best quality perhaps is its potential to convey the ability to write sound formal proofs. The proofs are definitely *not* hard, with only few mind-challenging exceptions. I would especially recommend it as a preparatory book for an advanced course on compiler design.

I am not an instructor in the course, like some of the other reviewers. I am actually a student working at an undergraduate level, as a Computer Science major. The poor explanations with the sectional exercises prompted me to write the review.

In my honest opinion, the book is poor. It seems like it rushed for publication. Not only are the explanations poor, but the solutions for the in-book exercises are as well. I mention this, since all of my homework is lifted from this text. The book lists back-of-the-book solutions. Sometimes it will list solutions for the wrong problems. Other times it will have incorrect solutions (especially with grammar productions.)

My advice is to avoid the text. If it is required reading for the course, then look for a used copy at best to purchase.

Like many reviewers, I too had to buy this book for a cs class. It is one of the most worthless books I've ever owned. The treatment of the material was flimsy at best. A math textbook usually is replete with many examples, but this one leaves most of the examples as homework exercises. Most of the examples are easy, but the homework exercises are cryptic and difficult. It would have been helpful to include some difficult problems in the examples as well. Unless you have a very good instructor to give adequate examples, I would stay away from this book or look for supplemental material.