# How do we decide whether or not to accept $\epsilon$ in dfa?

Can I exclude $$\epsilon$$? Will that make a difference. This is really confusing me. It seems everything could contain $$\epsilon$$. Is there some way of thinking to realize this contains $$\epsilon$$ or not. I was looking at a DFA for $$a$$ followed by $$b$$. And it also contained $$\epsilon$$ which seems confusing to me. That means $$\epsilon$$ is there everywhere (most cases). Can I ignore it?

A DFA is a tuple $$(Q,\Sigma,\delta,q_0,F)$$, where $$Q$$ is a finite set, $$\Sigma$$ is a non-empty finite set, $$\delta$$ is a function from $$Q \times \Sigma$$ to $$Q$$, $$q_0$$ is an element of $$Q$$, and $$F$$ is a subset of $$Q$$. We extend $$\delta$$ to a function $$\hat\delta$$ from $$Q \times \Sigma^*$$ to $$Q$$ as follows: $$\hat\delta(q,\epsilon) = q$$ and $$\hat\delta(q,x\sigma) = \delta(\hat\delta(q,x),\sigma)$$. Finally, the language accepted by the DFA is $$L=\{ w \in \Sigma^* : \hat\delta(q_0,w) \in F. \}$$ In particular, $$\epsilon \in L$$ iff $$\hat\delta(q_0,\epsilon) \in F$$ iff $$q_0 \in F$$.
You mention a DFA "containing $$\epsilon$$". My guess is that you saw an automaton with $$\epsilon$$ labelling one of the edges. This is a pictorial representation of an $$\epsilon$$-NFA, a generalization of DFAs which allows such transitions, and whose semantics we skip in this answer.