What is the difference between an Alphabet and an element of a set?

Question

Whether Alphabet is an element of a set or it is a set itself?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_(computer_science) – qwerty_so May 15 '15 at 23:44 — qwerty_so, May 15 '15 at 23:44

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered May 15 '15 at 00:38

It might be a little more correct to say that an Alphabet is a domain, whose definition consists of: "a set." In other words, an Alphabet is the set of all possible letters, such that any symbol that is not within that set, is not "a letter."

Notice that "a word" is not "a set," but rather "a collection" of "letters," because any word (such as the word, "letters") might contain the same letter many times.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 14 '15 at 23:57

if we only talk about automata theory, an Alphabet is a set of elements(letters). So an Alphabet is an example of set where elements of this set are letters.

For exemple an alphabet A = {a, b, c} where 'a' is one of its elements.

I don't know if it is the answer you want. Maybe you could precise your question if it is not ? :)

EDIT : But you can have a set of sets like :

K = { {a, b, c}, {m, n, o} } which contains two Alphabets. But here K isn't an Alphabet anymore, it's a set of Alphabet.

Bye.

What is the difference between an Alphabet and an element of a set?

2 Answers2