Closure properties on regular languages are defined as certain operations on regular language which are guaranteed to produce regular language. Closure refers to some operation on a language, resulting in a new language that is of same “type” as originally operated on i.e., regular.

Regular languages are closed under following operations.

Consider L and M are regular languages:

Kleen Closure:
RS is a regular expression whose language is L, M. R* is a regular expression whose language is L*.

1.      Positive closure:
RS is a regular expression whose language is L, M.  is a regular expression whose language is .

2.      Complement:
The complement of a language L (with respect to an alphabet  such that  contains L) is –L. Since  is surely regular, the complement of a regular language is always regular.

3.      Reverse Operator:
Given language L,  is the set of strings whose reversal is in L.
Example: L = {0, 01, 100};
 ={0, 10, 001}.
Proof: Let E be a regular expression for L. We show how to reverse E, to provide a regular expression  for .

4.      Complement:
The complement of a language L (with respect to an alphabet  such that  contains L) is –L. Since  is surely regular, the complement of a regular language is always regular.

5.      Union:
Let L and M be the languages of regular expressions R and S, respectively.Then R+S is a regular expression whose language is(L U M).

6.      Intersection:
Let L and M be the languages of regular expressions R and S, respectively then it a regular expression whose language is L intersection M.
proof: Let A and B be DFA’s whose languages are L and M, respectively. Construct C, the product automaton of A and B make the final states of C be the pairs consisting of final states of both A and B.

7.      Set Difference operator:
If L and M are regular languages, then so is L – M = strings in L but not M.

Proof: Let A and B be DFA’s whose languages are L and M, respectively. Construct C, the product automaton of A and B make the final states of C be the pairs, where A-state is final but B-state is not.

8.      Homomorphism:
A homomorphism on an alphabet is a function that gives a string for each symbol in that alphabet. Example: h(0) = ab; h(1) = . Extend to strings by h(a1…an) =h(a1)…h(an). Example: h(01010) = ababab.

If L is a regular language, and h is a homomorphism on its alphabet, then h(L)= {h(w) | w is in L} is also a regular language.
Proof: Let E be a regular expression for L. Apply h to each symbol in E. Language of resulting R, E is h(L).

9.      Inverse Homomorphism : Let h be a homomorphism and L a language whose alphabet is the output language of h.  (L) = {w | h(w) is in L}.

Note: There are few more properties like symmetric difference operator, prefix operator, substitution which are closed under closure properties of regular language.

Decision Properties:
Approximately all the properties are decidable in case of finite automaton.

(i) Emptiness

(ii) Non-emptiness

(iii) Finiteness

(iv) Infiniteness

(v) Membership

(vi) Equality 

These are explained as following below.

(i) Emptiness and Non-emptiness:

·   Step-1: select the state that cannot be reached from the initial states & delete them (remove unreachable states).

·   Step 2: if the resulting machine contains at least one final states, so then the finite automata accepts the non-empty language.

·   Step 3: if the resulting machine is free from final state, then finite automata accepts empty language.

(ii) Finiteness and Infiniteness:

·         Step-1: select the state that cannot be reached from the initial state & delete them (remove unreachable states).

·         Step-2: select the state from which we cannot reach the final state & delete them (remove dead states).

·         Step-3: if the resulting machine contains loops or cycles then the finite automata accepts infinite language.

·         Step-4: if the resulting machine do not contain loops or cycles then the finite automata accepts infinite language.

(iii) Membership:
Membership is a property to verify an arbitrary string is accepted by a finite automaton or not i.e. it is a member of the language or not.

Let M is a finite automata that accepts some strings over an alphabet, and let ‘w’ be any string defined over the alphabet, if there exist a transition path in M, which starts at initial state & ends in anyone of the final state, then string ‘w’ is a member of M, otherwise ‘w’ is not a member of M.

(iv) Equality:
Two finite state automata M1 & M2 is said to be equal if and only if, they accept the same language. Minimise the finite state automata and the minimal DFA will be unique.