English

Gray-coding through nested sets

Combinatorics 2015-02-13 v2

Abstract

We consider the following combinatorial question. Let S0S1S2...Sm S_0 \subset S_1 \subset S_2 \subset ...\subset S_m be nested sets, where #(Si)=i(S_i) = i. A move consists of altering one of the sets SiS_i, 1im11 \le i \le m-1, in a manner so that the nested condition still holds and #(Si)(S_i) is still ii. Our goal is to find a sequence of moves that exhausts through all subsets of SmS_m (other than the initial sets SiS_i) with no repeats. We call this "Gray-coding through nested sets" because of the analogy with Frank Gray's theory of exhausting through integers while altering only one bit at a time. Our main result is an efficient algorithm that solves this problem. As a byproduct, we produce new families of cyclic Gray codes through binary mm-bit integers.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1502.02625,
  title  = {Gray-coding through nested sets},
  author = {Antonia W. Bluher},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1502.02625},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

16 pages. Feb 11, 2015: some typos corrected

R2 v1 2026-06-22T08:25:48.444Z