Final answer:
The main differences between DFAs and NFAs lie in their transition mechanisms and construction complexity. DFAs have unique transitions for each state-symbol pair and therefore a single computation path, whereas NFAs can have multiple transitions, allowing several computation paths for the same input.
Step-by-step explanation:
The key differences between Deterministic Finite Automata (DFA) and Nondeterministic Finite Automata (NFA) largely concern how they process input strings and handle transitions between states.
In a DFA, for any given state and input symbol, there is exactly one transition to another state.
This means that it is deterministic in nature, having a single possible sequence of transitions for a given input string.
In contrast, an NFA can have multiple transitions for a single input symbol in a given state, which includes zero, one, or more transitions.
This non-determinism feature allows the NFA to have several possible sequences of transitions
Despite these differences, it's worth mentioning that NFAs and DFAs are equivalent in terms of the types of languages they can recognize; every NFA has an equivalent DFA that accepts the same language, although the resulting DFA may have exponentially more states due to its deterministic nature.