Automata, Languages and Programming

This volume contains the contributions of the 29th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP) held July8-13, 2002 in M'alaga, Spain. The diversityand the qualityof the scienti?c program of ICALP 2002 serve as evidence that theoretical computer science with all its aspects continues to be a vibrant ?eld and is increasinglyturning into a valuable and abundant source of ideas and concepts for other research disciplines and app- cations. ICALP has been the main annual scienti?c event of the European Assoc- tion for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) for almost thirtyyears, making ICALP one of the best-established conferences in theoretical computer science and EATCS one of the world's largest and oldest theoretical computer science organizations. To re?ect the two parts of the EATCS journal Theoretical Computer Science (TCS), ICALP's technical program is split into two parts: while track A is - voted to algorithms, automata, complexity, and games, track B focuses on logic, semantics, and theoryof programming.