An Introduction to Formal Languages and Automata

Rating:
Summary: A good introduction to a difficult topic
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A good introduction to a difficult topic
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Not an "Introduction"
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: Not an "Introduction"
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: This is really a good introduction for any student wishing to pursue a high-level career in computer science. A must-read.

Rating:
Summary: Not a good textbook
Review: This is the text book for our formal language course. This book really confuses me (and many other students). Our instructor does nice job to explain the topics in his own language, which is much easier to understand. This proves that there is a better way to make those topics more understandable. I don't want to say that it is not a good book. But it's not a good text book for computer science students. Instructors should read the reviews on amazon.com before them select the text books for their students.

Rating:
Summary: At least not a good text book for computer science students
Review: This is the text book for our formal language course. This book really confuses me. Our instructor does nice job to explain the topics in his own language, which is much easier to understand. This proves that there is better way to make those topics more understandable to average people. I don't want to say that it is not a good book. But it's not a good text book for computer science students. Instructors should read the reviews on amazon.com before them select the text books.

Rating:
Summary: Boring subject
Review: This subject is confusing in general, I have this professor and he's really confusing, but when I read his own book it's actually better that him.

Rating:
Summary: Yikes
Review: 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);
...}
}