Related papers: The finite basis problem for words with at most tw…
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…
In this note we provide a (decidable) graph-structural characterisation of the infiniteness of $L(w_1, ..., w_k)$, where $L(w_1, ..., w_k) = \{w \in A^* | |w|_{w_1} = \cdots = |w|_{w_k}\}$ is the set of all words that contain the same…
A group-word w is called concise if whenever the set of w-values in a group G is finite it always follows that the verbal subgroup w(G) is finite. More generally, a word w is said to be concise in a class of groups X if whenever the set of…
In combinatorics on words, a word $w$ over an alphabet $\Sigma$ is said to avoid a pattern $p$ over an alphabet $\Delta$ of variables if there is no factor $f$ of $w$ such that $f=h(p)$ where $h:\Delta^*\to\Sigma^*$ is a non-erasing…
We provide a complete classification of matrix semirings $\mathbf{M}_n(S)$ over two-element additively idempotent semirings $S$ with respect to the finite basis property.Our main theorem shows that for every integer $n \geq 2$,the semiring…
We consider various decision problems for automatic semigroups, which involve the provision of an automatic structure as part of the problem instance. With mild restrictions on the automatic structure, which seem to be necessary to make the…
Let G be a context-free grammar with a total alphabet V, and let F be a final language over an alphabet W such that W is a subset of V. A final sentential form is any sentential form of G that, after omitting symbols from V - W, it belongs…
A group-word $w$ is concise in a class of groups $\mathcal X$ if and only if the verbal subgroup $w(G)$ is finite whenever $w$ takes only finitely many values in a group $G\in \mathcal X$. It is a long-standing open problem whether every…
We investigate the number of sets of words that can be formed from a finite alphabet, counted by the total length of the words in the set. An explicit expression for the counting sequence is derived from the generating function, and…
The study of word equations (or the existential theory of equations over free monoids) is a central topic in mathematics and theoretical computer science. The problem of deciding whether a given word equation has a solution was shown to be…
A finite word $w$ with $\vert w\vert=n$ contains at most $n+1$ distinct palindromic factors. If the bound $n+1$ is attained, the word $w$ is called \emph{rich}. Let $\Factor(w)$ be the set of factors of the word $w$. It is known that there…
This paper investigates the class of finitely presented monoids defined by homogeneous (length-preserving) relations from a computational perspective. The properties of admitting a finite complete rewriting system, having finite derivation…
We investigate the least number of palindromic factors in an infinite word. We first consider general alphabets, and give answers to this problem for periodic and non-periodic words, closed or not under reversal of factors. We then…
The compressed word problem for a finitely generated monoid M asks whether two given compressed words over the generators of M represent the same element of M. For string compression, straight-line programs, i.e., context-free grammars that…
We solve two long-standing open problems on word equations. Firstly, we prove that a one-variable word equation with constants has either at most three or an infinite number of solutions. The existence of such a bound had been conjectured,…
Given a subset of states $S$ of a deterministic finite automaton and a word $w$, the preimage is the subset of all states mapped to a state in $S$ by the action of $w$. We study three natural problems concerning words giving certain…
Let $w = w(x_1,..., x_n)$ be a word, i.e. an element of the free group $F =<x_1,...,x_n>$ on $n$ generators $x_1,..., x_n$. The verbal subgroup $w(G)$ of a group $G$ is the subgroup generated by the set $\{w (g_1,...,g_n)^{\pm 1} | g_i \in…
A word is called closed if it has a prefix which is also its suffix and there is no internal occurrences of this prefix in the word. In this paper we study words that are rich in closed factors, i.e., which contain the maximal possible…
We discuss the notion of privileged word, recently introduced by Peltomaki. A word w is privileged if it is of length <=1, or has a privileged border that occurs exactly twice in w. We prove the following results: (1) if w^k is privileged…
We present a general method for proving that a semigroup is non-finitely based. The method is strong enough to cover the non-finite basis arguments in articles [1,3,4,5,7,8, 11,14,16,21,27,31,36,37]. In particular, the method allows to…