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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…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2017-08-23 Joey Becker , F. Blanchet-Sadri , Laure Flapan , Stephen Watkins

In 2011, Fici and Lipt\'ak introduced prefix normal words. A binary word is prefix normal if it has no factor (substring) that contains more occurrences of the letter 1 than the prefix of the same length. Among the open problems regarding…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-08-28 Duncan Adamson , Moritz Dudey , Pamela Fleischmann , Annika Huch

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…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-09-16 Hannah Vogel

The notion of Abelian complexity of infinite words was recently used by the three last authors to investigate various Abelian properties of words. In particular, using van der Waerden's theorem, they proved that if a word avoids Abelian…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2010-05-17 Julien Cassaigne , Gwénaël Richomme , Kalle Saari , Luca Q. Zamboni

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…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2016-05-31 A. Bernardino , M. Silva , R. Pacheco

A pattern p (i.e., a string of variables and terminals) matches a word w, if w can be obtained by uniformly replacing the variables of p by terminal words. The respective matching problem, i.e., deciding whether or not a given pattern…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-07-30 Florin Manea , Markus L. Schmid

We study the properties of the sequence of words $(B_i)$, where $B_1 = 101$ and $B_{i+1} = B_i C_i$ for $i \geq 1$, where $C_i$ is $B_i$ with the first $i$ symbols removed, and the infinite binary sequence ${\bf b} = 10101101011011101…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-05-11 Jeffrey Shallit

We study a new notion of cyclic avoidance of abelian powers. A finite word $w$ avoids abelian $N$-powers cyclically if for each abelian $N$-power of period $m$ occurring in the infinite word $w^\omega$, we have $m \geq |w|$. Let…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2020-11-04 Jarkko Peltomäki , Markus A. Whiteland

The binomial notation (w u) represents the number of occurrences of the word u as a (scattered) subword in w. We first introduce and study possible uses of a geometrical interpretation of (w ab) and (w ba) when a and b are distinct letters.…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2025-10-09 Gwenaël Richomme

In this paper, we extend the notion of Lyndon word to transfinite words. We prove two main results. We first show that, given a transfinite word, there exists a unique factorization in Lyndon words that are densely non-increasing, a…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2023-06-22 Olivier Carton , Luc Boasson

Given a subset $W$ of an abelian group $G$, a subset $C$ is called an additive complement for $W$ if $W+C=G$; if, moreover, no proper subset of $C$ has this property, then we say that $C$ is a minimal complement for $W$. It is natural to…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-01-01 Noga Alon , Noah Kravitz , Matt Larson

How long can a word be that avoids the unavoidable? Word $W$ encounters word $V$ provided there is a homomorphism $\phi$ defined by mapping letters to nonempty words such that $\phi(V)$ is a subword of $W$. Otherwise, $W$ is said to avoid…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-10-30 Joshua Cooper , Danny Rorabaugh

In this paper we study the enumeration and the construction of particular binary words avoiding the pattern $1^{j+1}0^j$. By means of the theory of Riordan arrays, we solve the enumeration problem and we give a particular succession rule,…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2011-03-30 Stefano Bilotta , Donatella Merlini , Elisa Pergola , Renzo Pinzani

This paper describes an alternative method of generating fixed points of certain substitution systems. This method centres on taking infinite words consisting of one repeated letter per word. These infinite words are then interlaced to form…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2012-03-01 David Fletcher

A word contains a \emph{half-flip} if it contains non-empty factors $uv$ and $vu$ where $|u|=|v|$. Fici reports a non-constructive proof of the existence of an infinite word over a finite alphabet avoiding half-flips and asks for the size…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-05-20 Pascal Ochem

The study proves the existence of an algorithm to receive all elements of a class of binary matrices without obtaining redundant elements, e. g. without obtaining binary matrices that do not belong to the class. This makes it possible to…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2013-12-03 Krasimir Yordzhev

In this note we provide a (decidable) graph-structural characterisation of the infiniteness of $L(w_1, ..., w_k)$, where $L(w_1, ..., w_k) = \{w \in A^* | |w|_{w_1} = \cdots = |w|_{w_k}\}$ is the set of all words that contain the same…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2019-10-29 Ryoma Sin'ya

In combinatorics on words, a word w of length n over an alphabet of size q is said to be privileged if n <= 1 or if n >= 2 and w has a privileged border that occurs exactly twice in w. Forsyth, Jayakumar and Shallit proved that there exist…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-02-02 Jeremy Nicholson , Narad Rampersad

A factor $u$ of a word $w$ is a cover of $w$ if every position in $w$ lies within some occurrence of $u$ in $w$. A word $w$ covered by $u$ thus generalizes the idea of a repetition, that is, a word composed of exact concatenations of $u$.…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2014-01-03 Tomasz Kociumaka , Jakub Radoszewski , Wojciech Rytter , Solon P. Pissis , Tomasz Waleń

An absent factor of a string $w$ is a string $u$ which does not occur as a contiguous substring (a.k.a. factor) inside $w$. We extend this well-studied notion and define absent subsequences: a string $u$ is an absent subsequence of a string…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2026-04-08 Maria Kosche , Tore Koß , Florin Manea , Stefan Siemer