Related papers: Constructing Words with High Distinct Square Densi…

A closed word (a.k.a. periodic-like word or complete first return) is a word whose longest border does not have internal occurrences, or, equivalently, whose longest repeated prefix is not right special. We investigate the structure of…

An order-preserving square in a string is a fragment of the form $uv$ where $u\neq v$ and $u$ is order-isomorphic to $v$. We show that a string $w$ of length $n$ over an alphabet of size $\sigma$ contains $\mathcal{O}(\sigma n)$…

A binary shuffle square is a binary word of even length that can be partitioned into two disjoint, identical subwords. Huang, Nam, Thaper, and the first author conjectured that as $n\rightarrow \infty$, asymptotically half of all binary…

In this work, we treat subshifts, defined in terms of an alphabet $A$ and (usually infinite) forbidden list $F$, where the number of $n$-letter words in $F$ has "slow growth rate" in $n$. We show that such subshifts are well-behaved in…

The subword complexity of a word $w$ over a finite alphabet $\mathcal{A}$ is a function that assigns for each positive integer $n$, the number of distinct subwords of length $n$ in $w$. The subword complexity of a word is a good measure of…

A word~$w$ has a border $u$ if $u$ is a non-empty proper prefix and suffix of $u$. A word~$w$ is said to be \emph{closed} if $w$ is of length at most $1$ or if $w$ has a border that occurs exactly twice in $w$. A word~$w$ is said to be…

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…

A non-empty word $w$ is a border of the word $u$ if $\vert w\vert<\vert u\vert$ and $w$ is both a prefix and a suffix of $u$. A word $u$ with the border $w$ is closed if $u$ has exactly two occurrences of $w$. A word $u$ is privileged if…

A string $s$ is called a parameterized square when $s = xy$ for strings $x$, $y$ and $x$ and $y$ are parameterized equivalent. Kociumaka et al. showed the number of parameterized squares, which are non-equivalent in parameterized…

Two words have a reverse if they have the same pair of distinct letters on the same pair of positions, but in reversed order. A set of words no two of which have a reverse is said to be reverse-free. Let F(n,k) be the maximum size of a…

Trapezoidal words are words having at most $n+1$ distinct factors of length $n$ for every $n\ge 0$. They therefore encompass finite Sturmian words. We give combinatorial characterizations of trapezoidal words and exhibit a formula for their…

A position $p$ in a word $w$ is critical if the minimal local period at $p$ is equal to the global period of $w$. According to the Critical Factorisation Theorem all words of length at least two have a critical point. We study the number…

Let d be an integer between 0 and 4, and W be a 2-dimensional word of dimensions h x w on the binary alphabet {0, 1}, where h, w in Z > 0. Assume that each occurrence of the letter 1 in W is adjacent to at most d letters 1. We provide an…

A $q$-ary maximum distance separable (MDS) code $C$ with length $n$, dimension $k$ over an alphabet $\mathcal{A}$ of size $q$ is a set of $q^k$ codewords that are elements of $\mathcal{A}^n$, such that the Hamming distance between two…

For every natural number $n\geq 2$ and every finite sequence $L$ of natural numbers, we consider the set $UD_n(L)$ of all uniquely decodable codes over an $n$-letter alphabet with the sequence $L$ as the sequence of code word lengths, as…

An additive quaternary $[n,k,d]$-code (length $n,$ quaternary dimension $k,$ minimum distance $d$) is a $2k$-dimensional F_2-vector space of $n$-tuples with entries in $Z_2\times Z_2$ (the $2$-dimensional vector space over F_2) with minimum…

Let $A$ and $B$ be sets of words of length $n$ over some finite alphabet. Suppose that no suffix of a word in $A$ coincides with a prefix of a word in $B$. Then we show that the product of densities of $A$ and $B$ is upper bounded by…

Given an alphabet $S$, we consider the size of the subsets of the full sequence space $S^{\rm {\bf Z}}$ determined by the additional restriction that $x_i\not=x_{i+f(n)},\ i\in {\rm {\bf Z}},\ n\in {\rm {\bf N}}.$ Here $f$ is a positive,…

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…

The number of frequencies of factors of length $n+1$ in a recurrent aperiodic infinite word does not exceed $3\Delta \C(n)$, where $\Delta \C (n)$ is the first difference of factor complexity, as shown by Boshernitzan. Pelantov\'a together…