Related papers: Computing the longest common prefix of a context-f…
We show that the number of length-n words over a k-letter alphabet having no even palindromic prefix is the same as the number of length-n unbordered words, by constructing an explicit bijection between the two sets. A slightly different…
Multiple (simple) context-free tree grammars are investigated, where "simple" means "linear and nondeleting". Every multiple context-free tree grammar that is finitely ambiguous can be lexicalized; i.e., it can be transformed into an…
A language over an alphabet $B = A \cup \overline{A}$ of opening ($A$) and closing ($\overline{A}$) brackets, is balanced if it is a subset of the Dyck language $D_B$ over $B$, and it is well-formed if all words are prefixes of words in…
A language L is prefix-free if, whenever words u and v are in L and u is a prefix of v, then u=v. Suffix-, factor-, and subword-free languages are defined similarly, where "subword" means "subsequence". A language is bifix-free if it is…
Given a partially-ordered finite alphabet $\Sigma$ and a language $L\subseteq \Sigma^*$, how large can an antichain in $L$ be (where $L$ is given the lexicographic ordering)? More precisely, since $L$ will in general be infinite, we should…
A prefix normal word is a binary word with the property that no substring has more 1s than the prefix of the same length. This class of words is important in the context of binary jumbled pattern matching. In this paper we present an…
Suppose that some polynomial $f$ with rational coefficients takes only natural values at natural numbers, i.e., $L=\{f(n)\mid n\in \mathbb N\}\subset\mathbb N$. We show that the base-$q$ representation of $L$ is a context-free language if…
We continue our study of ordered context-free grammars, a grammar formalism that places an order on the parse trees produced by the corresponding context-free grammar. In particular, we simplify our previous definition of a derivation of a…
Although real-world text datasets, such as DNA sequences, are far from being uniformly random, average-case string searching algorithms perform significantly better than worst-case ones in most applications of interest. In this paper, we…
A language L is prefix-closed if, whenever a word w is in L, then every prefix of w is also in L. We define suffix-, factor-, and subword-closed languages in the same way, where by subword we mean subsequence. We study the quotient…
We investigate the construction of prefix-free and fix-free codes with specified codeword compositions. We present a polynomial time algorithm which constructs a fix-free code with the same codeword compositions as a given code for a…
Prefix parsing asks whether an input prefix can be extended to a complete string generated by a given grammar. In the weighted setting, it also provides prefix probabilities, which are central to context-free language modeling,…
We study various complexity properties of suffix-free regular languages. The quotient complexity of a regular language $L$ is the number of left quotients of $L$; this is the same as the state complexity of $L$. A regular language $L'$ is a…
A language $L$ over an alphabet $\Sigma$ is prefix-convex if, for any words $x,y,z\in\Sigma^*$, whenever $x$ and $xyz$ are in $L$, then so is $xy$. Prefix-convex languages include right-ideal, prefix-closed, and prefix-free languages. We…
This paper shows that a simple algorithm produces the {\em all-prefixes-LCSs-graph} in $O(mn)$ time for two input sequences of size $m$ and $n$. Given any prefix $p$ of the first input sequence and any prefix $q$ of the second input…
We investigate the structural relationship between prefix-free codes over the binary alphabet and a class of unlabeled rooted trees, which we call \emph{symmetric} trees. We establish a canonical correspondence between prefix-free codes and…
Nonterminal complexity of a context-free language is the smallest possible number of nonterminals in its generating grammar. While in general case nonterminal complexity computation problem is unsolvable, it can be computed for different…
We prove that longest common prefix (LCP) information can be stored in much less space than previously known. More precisely, we show that in the presence of the text and the suffix array, o(n) additional bits are sufficient to answer…
A test set for a formal language (set of strings) L is a subset T of L such that for any two string homomorphisms f and g defined on L, if the restrictions of f and g on T are identical functions, then f and g are identical on the entire L.…
We study the problem of deciding whether a given language is directed. A language $L$ is \emph{directed} if every pair of words in $L$ have a common (scattered) superword in $L$. Deciding directedness is a fundamental problem in connection…