0

Possible Duplicate:
How to prove that a language is not context-free?

I'm having a hard time figuring this out, any help is appreciated.

Let EQUAL be the language of all words over $\Sigma = \{a,b,c\}$ that have the same number of $a$’s, $b$’s and $c$’s

$\qquad \text{EQUAL} = \{ w \in \Sigma^* \mid |w|_a = |w|_b = |w|_c \}$

The order of the letters doesn't matter. How can you prove that EQUAL is non-context-free?

1 Answers1

3

It is known that the intersection of a context-free language with a regular language is context-free. If EQUAL were context-free, so would be its intersection with $a^*b^*c^*$, which is the well-known non-context-free $\{a^nb^nc^n : n \in \mathbb{N}\}$.

Yuval Filmus
  • 276,994
  • 27
  • 311
  • 503