English

Onion De Bruijn Sequences: Fixed-Window Counting by Growing the Alphabet

Discrete Mathematics 2026-05-13 v5 Combinatorics

Abstract

We study a fixed-window counting system in which integers are represented by words of constant length while the alphabet grows as needed. This viewpoint arises from De Bruijn sequences: for fixed order nn, the reverse prefer-max sequence is compatible with alphabet growth, since for each kk its restriction to [k]n[k]^n is a De Bruijn sequence, yielding an infinite sequence over N\mathbb{N}. We formalize this through the notion of an onion De Bruijn sequence, prove the resulting structural properties, and count compatible finite onion prefixes by an explicit product formula. For orders n=2,3n=2,3, we give explicit rank and unrank formulas and describe addition and multiplication via finite normalization, with exact carry counts and linear carry complexity in the input layers.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1906.06157,
  title  = {Onion De Bruijn Sequences: Fixed-Window Counting by Growing the Alphabet},
  author = {Dor Genosar and Yotam Svoray and Gera Weiss},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1906.06157},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Minor corrections made

R2 v1 2026-06-23T09:53:46.421Z