Pumping Lemma For Regular Languages - Formal Statement

Formal Statement

Let L be a regular language. Then there exists an integer p ≥ 1 depending only on L such that every string w in L of length at least p (p is called the "pumping length") can be written as w = xyz (i.e., w can be divided into three substrings), satisfying the following conditions:

  1. |y| ≥ 1;
  2. |xy| ≤ p
  3. for all i ≥ 0, xyiz ∈ L

y is the substring that can be pumped (removed or repeated any number of times, and the resulting string is always in L). (1) means the loop y to be pumped must be of length at least one; (2) means the loop must occur within the first p characters. |x| must be smaller than p (conclusion of (1) and (2)), apart from that there is no restriction on x and z.

In simple words, for any regular language L, any sufficiently long word w (in L) can be split into 3 parts. i.e. w = xyz, such that all the strings xykz for k≥0 are also in L.

Below is a formal expression of the Pumping Lemma.

\begin{array}{l} (\forall L\subseteq \Sigma^*) \\ \quad (\mbox{regular}(L) \Rightarrow \\ \quad ((\exists p\geq 1) ( (\forall w\in L) ((|w|\geq p) \Rightarrow \\ \quad\quad ((\exists x,y,z \in \Sigma^*) (w=xyz \land (|y|\geq 1 \land |xy|\leq p \land (\forall i\geq 0)(xy^iz\in L)))))))) \end{array}

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