Vaucanson Project

The Vaucanson platform VCSN is a software dedicated to the computation of, and with, finite state machines. Here finite state machines is to be understood in the broadest possible sense: finite automata with output — often called transducers then — or even more generally finite automata with multiplicity, that is, automata that not only accept, or recognize, sequences of symbols but compute for every such sequence a «value» that is associated with it and which can be taken in any semiring. Hence the variety of situations that can thus be modellized.

VCSN has been designed with (at least) three goals in mind: to allow generic programming of a wide class of finite automata, to provide a language close to the mathematical description of algorithms on automata, to be a free and open software.