On the complexity of computing Strahler numbers
Computational Complexity
2025-12-23 v1 Formal Languages and Automata Theory
Abstract
It is shown that the problem of computing the Strahler number of a binary tree given as a term is complete for the circuit complexity class uniform . For several variants, where the binary tree is given by a pointer structure or in a succinct form by a directed acyclic graph or a tree straight-line program, the complexity of computing the Strahler number is determined as well. The problem, whether a given context-free grammar in Chomsky normal form produces a derivation tree (resp., an acyclic derivation tree), whose Strahler number is at least a given number is shown to be P-complete (resp., PSPACE-complete).
Cite
@article{arxiv.2512.19060,
title = {On the complexity of computing Strahler numbers},
author = {Moses Ganardi and Markus Lohrey},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.19060},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
accepted for STACS 2026