Related papers: Separating many words by counting occurrences of f…
Given two languages, a separator is a third language that contains the first one and is disjoint from the second one. We investigate the following decision problem: given two regular input languages of finite words, decide whether there…
When can two regular word languages K and L be separated by a simple language? We investigate this question and consider separation by piecewise- and suffix-testable languages and variants thereof. We give characterizations of when two…
Let $x$ and $y$ be words. We consider the languages whose words $z$ are those for which the numbers of occurrences of $x$ and $y$, as subwords of $z$, are the same (resp., the number of $x$'s is less than the number of $y$'s, resp., is less…
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…
In this paper we explore a new hierarchy of classes of languages and infinite words and its connection with complexity classes. Namely, we say that a language belongs to the class $L_k$ if it is a subset of the catenation of $k$ languages…
We consider variations on the following problem: given an NFA M and a pattern p, does there exist an x in L(M) such that p matches x? We consider the restricted problem where M only accepts a finite language. We also consider the variation…
We characterize the infinite words determined by indexed languages. An infinite language $L$ determines an infinite word $\alpha$ if every string in $L$ is a prefix of $\alpha$. If $L$ is regular or context-free, it is known that $\alpha$…
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 consider several novel aspects of unique factorization in formal languages. We reprove the familiar fact that the set uf(L) of words having unique factorization into elements of L is regular if L is regular, and from this deduce an…
In this paper, we consider infinite words that arise as fixed points of primitive substitutions on a finite alphabet and finite colorings of their factors. Any such infinite word exhibits a "hierarchal structure" that will allow us to…
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…
Let $H$ be an HD0L-system. We show that there are only finitely many primitive words $v$ with the property that $v^k$, for all integers $k$, is an element of the factorial language of $H$. In particular, this result applies to the set of…
Recognizable languages of finite words are part of every computer science cursus, and they are routinely described as a cornerstone for applications and for theory. We would like to briefly explore why that is, and how this word-related…
We consider a language together with the subword relation, the cover relation, and regular predicates. For such structures, we consider the extension of first-order logic by threshold- and modulo-counting quantifiers. Depending on the…
A set of words, also called a language, is letter-balanced if the number of occurrences of each letter only depends on the length of the word, up to a constant. Similarly, a language is factor-balanced if the difference of the number of…
We consider the set of finite random words $\mathcal A^\star$, with independent letters drawn from a finite or infinite totally ordered alphabet according to a general probability distribution. On a specific subset of $\mathcal A^\star$,…
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…
Separation is a classical problem asking whether, given two sets belonging to some class, it is possible to separate them by a set from a smaller class. We discuss the separation problem for regular languages. We give a Ptime algorithm to…
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…
We consider the following practical question: given a finite algebra A in a finite language, can we efficiently decide whether the variety generated by A has a difference term? We answer this question (positively) in the idempotent case and…