An analogue of the Myhill-Nerode theorem and its use in computing finite-basis characterizations

Abstract

A theorem that is a graph-theoretic analog of the Myhill-Nerode characterization of regular languages is proved. The theorem is used to establish that for many applications obstruction sets are computable by known algorithms. The focus is exclusively on what is computable (by a known algorithm) in principle, as opposed to what is computable in practice.