Related papers: Classifying Rotationally-Closed Languages Having G…
A word is level if each letter appears in it the same number of times, plus or minus 1. We give a complete characterization of the lengths for which level ternary circular square-free words exist. Key words: combinatorics on words, circular…
Letter-to-letter transducers are a standard formalism for modeling reactive systems. Often, two transducers that model similar systems differ locally from one another, by behaving similarly, up to permutations of the input and output…
The greedy algorithm for approximating dominating sets is a simple method that is known to compute an $(\ln n+1)$-approximation of a minimum dominating set on any graph with $n$ vertices. We show that a small modification of the greedy…
When a system sends messages through a lossy channel, then the language encoding all sequences of messages can be abstracted by its downward closure, i.e. the set of all (not necessarily contiguous) subwords. This is useful because even if…
The present paper presents and proves a proposition concerning the time complexity of finite languages. It is shown herein, that for any finite language (a language for which the set of words composing it is finite) there is a Turing…
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…
Covering arrays for words of length $t$ over a $d$ letter alphabet are $k \times n$ arrays with entries from the alphabet so that for each choice of $t$ columns, each of the $d^t$ $t$-letter words appears at least once among the rows of the…
Let $N(n,r,k)$ denote the number of binary words of length $n$ that begin with $0$ and contain exactly $k$ runs (i.e., maximal subwords of identical consecutive symbols) of length $r$. We show that the generating function for the sequence…
We study distributed algorithms that find a maximal matching in an anonymous, edge-coloured graph. If the edges are properly coloured with $k$ colours, there is a trivial greedy algorithm that finds a maximal matching in $k-1$ synchronous…
In this paper, we prove decidability properties and new results on the position of the family of languages generated by (circular) splicing systems within the Chomsky hierarchy. The two main results of the paper are the following. First, we…
A two-dimensional string is simply a two-dimensional array. We continue the study of the combinatorial properties of repetitions in such strings over the binary alphabet, namely the number of distinct tandems, distinct quartics, and runs.…
We introduce the notion of expandability in the context of automaton semigroups and groups: a word is k-expandable if one can append a suffix to it such that the size of the orbit under the action of the automaton increases by at least k.…
An attractive mechanism to specify global constraints in rostering and other domains is via formal languages. For instance, the Regular and Grammar constraints specify constraints in terms of the languages accepted by an automaton and a…
Suppose an oracle knows a string $S$ that is unknown to us and that we want to determine. The oracle can answer queries of the form "Is $s$ a substring of $S$?". In 1995, Skiena and Sundaram showed that, in the worst case, any algorithm…
We generalise clones, which are sets of functions $f:A^n \rightarrow A$, to sets of mappings $f:A^n \rightarrow A^m$. We formalise this and develop language that we can use to speak about it. We then look at bijective mappings, which have…
A Lyndon word is a non-empty word strictly smaller in the lexicographic order than any of its suffixes, except itself and the empty word. In this paper, we show how Lyndon words can be used in the distributed control of a set of n weak…
We enumerate labelled and unlabelled Hamiltonian cycles in complete $n$-partite graphs $K_{d,d,\ldots,d}$ having exactly $d$ vertices in each part (in other words, Tur\'an graphs $T(nd, n))$. We obtain recurrence relations that allow us to…
We conjecture that every oriented graph $G$ on $n$ vertices with $\delta ^+ (G) , \delta ^- (G) \geq 5n/12$ contains the square of a Hamilton cycle. We also give a conjectural bound on the minimum semidegree which ensures a perfect packing…
An iterative decoding algorithm for convolutional codes is presented. It successively processes $N$ consecutive blocks of the received word in order to decode the first block. A bound is presented showing which error configurations can be…
Regularities in strings are often related to periods and covers, which have extensively been studied, and algorithms for their efficient computation have broad application. In this paper we concentrate on computing cyclic regularities of…