English

Generation and analysis of lamplighter programs

Discrete Mathematics 2018-10-24 v2 Formal Languages and Automata Theory Programming Languages Combinatorics Group Theory

Abstract

We consider a programming language based on the lamplighter group that uses only composition and iteration as control structures. We derive generating functions and counting formulas for this language and special subsets of it, establishing lower and upper bounds on the growth rate of semantically distinct programs. Finally, we show how to sample random programs and analyze the distribution of runtimes induced by such sampling.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1707.02652,
  title  = {Generation and analysis of lamplighter programs},
  author = {Carlos Martin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1707.02652},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

Added section 7 (sampling random programs) and section 8 (distribution of runtimes)

R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:41:57.251Z