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enter image description here The first one is from unreputed youtuber whereas second one is from reputed university called adiuni course of theory of computation.

Now I know what that second figure means, it means it also accepts $\in$ as initial state=final state, but

  1. how I don't know that. This dfa should accept all binary divisble by 4. But how is nothing(it is not zero mind that) divisible by 4?

  2. Why I don't know that. I am making a dfa for binary numbers divisible by 4 and adiuni professor told that binary numbers that end with 00 are divisble by 4. So I googled about dfa ending with 00 and got this. I am personally more comfortable at first figure as it is more inituitive to me.

How is $\in$ divisible by 4? What does that even mean?

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  • $\begingroup$ nothing [is not zero] (reminds me of difficulties ancient Greek philosophers are assumed to have had.) How do you know, how would I without access to the definitions (here: binary) to use? $\endgroup$
    – greybeard
    Nov 4, 2021 at 7:35
  • $\begingroup$ I would be inclined to agree with you, I don't know what divisibility even means for the empty string. $\endgroup$
    – awillia91
    Nov 6, 2021 at 23:59

1 Answer 1

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The first DFA is correct, and the second is incorrect. When we say a string ends in 00 we imply that it must have at least two characters. So, it can't be the empty string, and it also can't be the single 0 string.

This dfa should accept all binary divisble by 4. But how is nothing(it is not zero mind that) divisible by 4?

I agree, and this is a good way of thinking about it. However, note that we aren't writing a DFA for the set of binary numbers divisible by 4 (that would include 0), but rather for the set of binary sequences which end in two zeros. So it is slightly different.

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