An Introduction to Formal Languages and Automata

Lot of review didn't like this book simply because it was "confusing", well this subject is inherently confused. I had to use this book for one of my course, and to my opinion is it a good book, it does a good job of explaining the concept, providing enough proof but not to the point that it bogged down the reader. If you put some effort in and actually think about all the concept/algorithm, you will like it much better, to those that couldn't understand this book, get a new major, i don't think your brain is fit for CS or any engineering major, may i suggest liberal art? or some type of social sci?

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.

This is really a good introduction for any student wishing to pursue a high-level career in computer science. A must-read.

I have used this book for a course about automata and formal languages. I think the text is very good and can be easily understood. The exercises require some study and time, but i think it's good to let the student work. After all, by just reading something you've forgotten most of it after a few months. The proofs are not hard to understand, you should just grab a piece of paper and try to follow them. If some people seem to think you can explain some of the subjects without proving a number of thing, i feel they are just plainly wrong. If you don't want to you don't have to read the proofs, but i'd advise you to do so anyway. I think the book was just right for me, for the course i was given. So never mind what some seem to think, just read it. It was of great help when i took a compilers course.

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.