Increasing visualization and interaction in the automata theory course

Abstract

In this paper we describe how to increase the visualization and interaction in the automata theory course through the use of the tools JFLAP and Pate. We also describe new features in these tools that allow additional visualization and interaction. New features in JFLAP include the addition of regular expressions and exploring their conversion from and to nondeterministic finite automata (NFA), and increasing the interaction in the conversion of automata to grammars. New features in Pate include the display of a parse tree while parsing unrestricted grammars, and improved interaction with parsing and the transformation of grammars.