Related papers: On Prefix Normal Words and Prefix Normal Forms
A subsequence of a word $w$ is a word $u$ such that $u = w[i_1] w[i_2] \cdots w[i_k]$, for some set of indices $1 \leq i_1 < i_2 < \dots < i_k \leq \vert w \vert$. A word $w$ is \emph{$k$-subsequence universal} over an alphabet $\Sigma$ if…
The mapping of lexical meanings to wordforms is a major feature of natural languages. While usage pressures might assign short words to frequent meanings (Zipf's law of abbreviation), the need for a productive and open-ended vocabulary,…
We establish new characterizations of primitive elements and free factors in free groups, which are based on the distributions they induce on finite groups. For every finite group $G$, a word $w$ in the free group on $k$ generators induces…
A generalized lexicographic order on words is a lexicographic order where the total order of the alphabet depends on the position of the comparison. A generalized Lyndon word is a finite word which is strictly smallest among its class of…
We investigate the expressive power of regular expressions for languages of countable words and establish their expressive equivalence with logical and algebraic characterizations. Our goal is to extend the classical theory of regular…
When flipping a fair coin, let $W = L_1L_2...L_N$ with $L_i\in\{H,T\}$ be a binary word of length $N=2$ or $N=3$. In this paper, we establish second- and third-order linear recurrence relations and their generating functions to discuss the…
The complement $\overline{x}$ of a binary word $x$ is obtained by changing each $0$ in $x$ to $1$ and vice versa. We study infinite binary words $\bf w$ that avoid sufficiently large complementary factors; that is, if $x$ is a factor of…
We study fibers of word maps in finite, profinite, and residually finite groups. Our main result is that, for any word w in the free group on d generators, there exists $\epsilon > 0$ such that if G is a residually finite group with…
Given a finite alphabet $\Sigma$ and a right-infinite word $\bf w$ over $\Sigma$, we define the Lie complexity function $L_{\bf w}:\mathbb{N}\to \mathbb{N}$, whose value at $n$ is the number of conjugacy classes (under cyclic shift) of…
Motivated by independent results of Bizley and Duchon, we study rational Dyck paths and their subset of factor-free elements. On the one hand, we give a bijection between rational Dyck paths and regular Dyck paths with ascents colored by…
We give a ranker-based description using finite-index congruences for the variety $\boldsymbol{\mathrm{DAb}}$ of finite monoids whose regular $\mathcal{D}$-classes form Abelian groups. This combinatorial description yields a normal form for…
Symmetric fix-free codes are prefix condition codes in which each codeword is required to be a palindrome. Their study is motivated by the topic of joint source-channel coding. Although they have been considered by a few communities they…
The observed frequency of the longest proper prefix, the longest proper suffix, and the longest infix of a word $w$ in a given sequence $x$ can be used for classifying $w$ as avoided or overabundant. The definitions used for the expectation…
Determining the index of the Simon congruence is a long outstanding open problem. Two words $u$ and $v$ are called Simon congruent if they have the same set of scattered factors, which are parts of the word in the correct order but not…
A correlation is a binary vector that encodes all possible positions of overlaps of two words, where an overlap for an ordered pair of words (u,v) occurs if a suffix of word u matches a prefix of word v. As multiple pairs can have the same…
The concept of "lost positions" is a recently introduced tool for counting the number of runs in words. We investigate the frequency of lost positions in prefixes of words. This leads to an algorithm that allows to show, using an extensive…
Generalised polynomials are maps constructed by applying the floor function, addition, and multiplication to polynomials. Despite superficial similarity, generalised polynomials exhibit many phenomena which are impossible for polynomials.…
We prove lower bounds on the length of regular expressions for finite languages by methods from arithmetic circuit complexity. First, we show a reduction: the length of a regular expression for a language $L\subseteq \{0,1\}^n$ is bounded…
Motivated by applications to string processing, we introduce variants of the Lyndon factorization called inverse Lyndon factorizations. Their factors, named inverse Lyndon words, are in a class that strictly contains anti-Lyndon words, that…
A word on $q$ symbols is a sequence of letters from a fixed alphabet of size $q$. For an integer $k\ge 1$, we say that a word $w$ is $k$-universal if, given an arbitrary word of length $k$, one can obtain it by removing entries from $w$. It…