High School

Consider two languages:

\[ l_1 = (a^* + b)^* \]

and

\[ l_2 = (ab)^* \]

What is the relationship between these two languages?

A. \( l_1 \) is a subset of \( l_2 \).
B. \( l_2 \) is a subset of \( l_1 \).
C. \( l_1 \) and \( l_2 \) are equivalent.
D. \( l_1 \) and \( l_2 \) have no relationship.

Answer :

Final answer:

The language l2, which only includes sequences of 'a' followed by 'b', is a subset of language l1, which can include any sequence of 'a', 'b', or both.

Explanation:

The relationship between the two languages l1=(a*+b)* and l2=(ab)* lies in the concept of regular expressions in theoretical computer science and formal language theory. Language l1 is designed to accept any sequence of 'a', 'b', or both. The '+' in the regular expression represents the union operation, meaning that l1 accepts any number of 'a' or any number of 'b', and the final '*' permits the mixture of these matches. On the other hand, language l2 is specified to only accept strings that consist of 'a' followed by 'b', repeated any number of times.

Given this, we can conclude that l2 is a subset of l1. This is because all the strings that l2 can generate (ab, abab, ababab, etc.) can also be generated by l1, but not the other way around.

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