Related papers: Remarks on Privileged Words
Given a language L and a nondeterministic finite automaton M, we consider whether we can determine efficiently (in the size of M) if M accepts at least one word in L, or infinitely many words. Given that M accepts at least one word in L, we…
Given a word $w$, what is the maximum possible number of appearances of $w$ reading contiguously along any of the directions in $\{-1, 0, 1\}^d \setminus \{\mathbf{0}\}$ in a large $d$-dimensional grid (as in a word search)? Patchell and…
In this paper, we study an abelian-type property of infinite words called well distributed occurrences, or WELLDOC for short. An infinite word $w$ on a $d$-ary alphabet has the WELLDOC property if, for each factor $u$ of $w$, positive…
We present a generalization of a known fact from combinatorics on words related to periodicity into quasiperiodicity. A string is called periodic if it has a period which is at most half of its length. A string $w$ is called quasiperiodic…
A set X of partial words over a finite alphabet A is called unavoidable if every two-sided infinite word over A has a factor compatible with an element of X. Unlike the case of a set of words without holes, the problem of deciding whether…
A reconstruction problem of words from scattered factors asks for the minimal information, like multisets of scattered factors of a given length or the number of occurrences of scattered factors from a given set, necessary to uniquely…
The inverse relationship between the length of a word and the frequency of its use, first identified by G.K. Zipf in 1935, is a classic empirical law that holds across a wide range of human languages. We demonstrate that length is one…
This paper studies balance properties for billiard words. Billiard words generalize Sturmian words by coding trajectories in hypercubic billiards. In the setting of aperiodic order, they also provide the simplest examples of quasicrystals,…
It is well known that Universal Cycles of $k$-letter words on an $n$-letter alphabet exist for all $k$ and $n$. In this paper, we prove that Universal Cycles exist for restricted classes of words, including: non-bijections, equitable words…
A word $w_1w_2\cdots w_n$ is said to be up-down if $w_1 < w_2 >w_3 \cdots$. Carlitz and Scoville found the generating function for the number of up-down words over an alphabet of size $k$. Using properties of the Chebyshev polynomials we…
A prefix code L satisfies the condition that no word of L is a proper prefix of another word of L. Recently, Ko, Han and Salomaa relaxed this condition by allowing a word of L to be a proper prefix of at most k words of L, for some `margin'…
With Zipf's law being originally and most famously observed for word frequency, it is surprisingly limited in its applicability to human language, holding over no more than three to four orders of magnitude before hitting a clear break in…
We prove that the subvariety of $SL(2)\times SL(2)$ given by the matrix equation $w(X,Y)=\alpha$, where $w$ is a word in two letters, is closely related to an explicit smooth conic bundle over the associated `trace surface' in the…
We determine the maximal length of the period of a periodic word defined by $n$ restrictions. It happens to be the corresponding Fibonacci number.
In 2005, Rampersad and the second author proved a number of theorems about infinite words x with the property that if w is any sufficiently long finite factor of x, then its reversal w^R is not a factor of x. In this note we revisit these…
Following Inoue et al., we define a word to be a repetition if it is a (fractional) power of exponent at least 2. A word has a repetition factorization if it is the product of repetitions. We study repetition factorizations in several…
A string is said to be closed if its length is one, or if it has a non-empty factor that occurs both as a prefix and as a suffix of the string, but does not occur elsewhere. The notion of closed words was introduced by [Fici, WORDS 2011].…
In this paper we explore various interconnections between rich words, Sturmian words, and trapezoidal words. Rich words, first introduced in arXiv:0801.1656 by the second and third authors together with J. Justin and S. Widmer, constitute a…
In the literature two notions of the word problem for a variety occur. A variety has a decidable word problem if every finitely presented algebra in the variety has a decidable word problem. It has a uniformly decidable word problem if…
In this paper we consider the following problems: how many different subsets of Sigma^n can occur as set of all length-n factors of a finite word? If a subset is representable, how long a word do we need to represent it? How many such…