English

On Non-Complete Sets and Restivo's Conjecture

Formal Languages and Automata Theory 2011-04-05 v1

Abstract

A finite set S of words over the alphabet A is called non-complete if Fact(S*) is different from A*. A word w in A* - Fact(S*) is said to be uncompletable. We present a series of non-complete sets S_k whose minimal uncompletable words have length 5k^2 - 17k + 13, where k > 3 is the maximal length of words in S_k. This is an infinite series of counterexamples to Restivo's conjecture, which states that any non-complete set possesses an uncompletable word of length at most 2k^2.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1104.0388,
  title  = {On Non-Complete Sets and Restivo's Conjecture},
  author = {Vladimir V. Gusev and Elena V. Pribavkina},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1104.0388},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

11 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-21T17:48:44.262Z