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We say that a word $w$ on a totally ordered alphabet avoids the word $v$ if there are no subsequences in $w$ order-equivalent to $v$. In this paper we suggest a new approach to the enumeration of words on at most $k$ letters avoiding a…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Petter Brändén , Toufik Mansour

In combinatorics on words, a word $w$ over an alphabet $\Sigma$ is said to avoid a pattern $p$ over an alphabet $\Delta$ if there is no factor $f$ of $w$ such that $f=h(p)$ where $h:\Delta^*\to\Sigma^*$ is a non-erasing morphism. A pattern…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-03-02 Antoine Domenech , Pascal Ochem

Let $S$ be one of $\{aba,bcb\}$ and $\{aba, aca\}$, and let $w$ be an infinite square-free word over $\Sigma=\{a,b,c\}$ with no factor in $S$. Suppose that $f:\Sigma\rightarrow T^*$ is a non-erasing morphism. Word $f(w)$ is square-free if…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2019-02-18 James D. Currie

Circular words are cyclically ordered finite sequences of letters. We give a computer-free proof of the following result by Currie: square-free circular words over the ternary alphabet exist for all lengths $l$ except for 5, 7, 9, 10, 14,…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2010-10-26 Arseny M. Shur

A square is a word of the form $xx$ for a non-empty word $x$. Brlek and Li [Comb. Theory, 2025] proved that the number of distinct squares in a word $w$ of length $n$ is at most $n - \sigma$, where $\sigma$ is the number of letters used in…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Eitatsu Tomita , Tomohiro I

The deviation of the observed frequency of a word $w$ from its expected frequency in a given sequence $x$ is used to determine whether or not the word is avoided. This concept is particularly useful in DNA linguistic analysis. The value of…

The palindromic length of a finite word $w$ is defined as the minimal number of palindromes such that their product is $w$. Clearly, this function may take different values depending on if we consider $w$ as an element a free semigroup or…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-12-12 Anna E. Frid

We construct infinite cubefree binary words containing exponentially many distinct squares of length n. We also show that for every positive integer n, there is a cubefree binary square of length 2n.

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2009-04-14 James Currie , Narad Rampersad

We find finite-state recurrences to enumerate the words on the alphabet $[n]^r$ which avoid the patterns 123 and $1k(k-1)\dots2$, and, separately, the words which avoid the patterns 1234 and $1k(k-1)\dots2$.

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-01-29 Yonah Biers-Ariel

An infinte word w avoids a pattern p with the involution t if there is no substitution for the variables in p and no involution t such that the resulting word is a factor of w. We investigate the avoidance of patterns with respect to the…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2011-08-19 Bastian Bischoff , Dirk Nowotka

Entringer, Jackson, and Schatz conjectured in 1974 that every infinite cubefree binary word contains arbitrarily long squares. In this paper we show this conjecture is false: there exist infinite cubefree binary words avoiding all squares…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Narad Rampersad , Jeffrey Shallit , Ming-wei Wang

We review the recent progress in the investigation of powerfree words, with particular emphasis on binary cubefree and ternary squarefree words. Besides various bounds on the entropy, we provide bounds on letter frequencies and consider…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2008-11-14 Uwe Grimm , Manuela Heuer

Two finite words $u,v$ are 2-binomially equivalent if, for all words $x$ of length at most 2, the number of occurrences of $x$ as a (scattered) subword of $u$ is equal to the number of occurrences of $x$ in $v$. This notion is a refinement…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2013-10-18 M. Rao , M. Rigo , P. Salimov

A {\em square} is a word of the form $uu$. In this paper we prove that for a given finite word $w$, the number of distinct square factors of $w$ is bounded by $|w|-|\Alphabet(w)|+1$, where $|w|$ denotes the length of $w$ and…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-04-27 Srečko Brlek , Shuo Li

In this paper, we consider pattern avoidance in a subset of words on $\{1,1,2,2,\dots,n,n\}$ called reverse double lists. In particular a reverse double list is a word formed by concatenating a permutation with its reversal. We enumerate…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-06-22 Monica Anderson , Marika Diepenbroek , Lara Pudwell , Alex Stoll

The avoidability of binary patterns by binary cube-free words is investigated and the exact bound between unavoidable and avoidable patterns is found. All avoidable patterns are shown to be D0L-avoidable. For avoidable patterns, the growth…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2019-02-20 Robert Mercas , Pascal Ochem , Alexei V. Samsonov , Arseny M. Shur

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…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2020-01-22 Josef Rukavicka

We are interested in the maximal number of distinct squares in a word. This problem was introduced by Fraenkel and Simpson, who presented a bound of 2n for a word of length n, and conjectured that the bound was less than n. Being that the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2020-01-10 Adrien Thierry

We study a question of Harju from 2019 regarding the existence of infinite ternary square-free words whose subsequences modulo $p$ and $q$ are also square-free for relatively prime integers $p$ and $q$. Among such pairs $(p, q)$ with $p, q…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-05-29 Thomas Delépine , Pascal Ochem , Matthieu Rosenfeld

The set of all avoidable patterns in n or fewer letters can be avoided on an alphabet with 2(n+2) letters.

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-01-29 Irina Melnichuk