A survey on difference hierarchies of regular languages

Difference hierarchies were originally introduced by Hausdorff and they play an important role in descriptive set theory. In this survey paper, we study difference hierarchies of regular languages. The first sections describe standard techniques on difference hierarchies, mostly due to Hausdorff. We illustrate these techniques by giving decidability results on the difference hierarchies based on shuffle ideals, strongly cyclic regular languages and the polynomial closure of group languages. Dedicated to the memory of Zoltán Ésik.