Subword balance, position indices and power sums

AbstractIn this paper, we investigate various ways of characterizing words, mainly over a binary alphabet, using information about the positions of occurrences of letters in words. We introduce two new measures associated with words, the position index and sum of position indices. We establish some characterizations, connections with Parikh matrices, and connections with power sums. One particular emphasis concerns the effect of morphisms and iterated morphisms on words

Two-step simulations of reaction systems by minimal ones

Reaction systems were introduced by Ehrenfeucht and Rozenberg with biochemical applications in mind. The model is suitable for the study of subset functions, that is, functions from the set of all subsets of a finite set into itself. In this study the number of resources of a reaction system is essential for questions concerning generative capacity. While all functions (with a couple of trivial exceptions) from the set of subsets of a finite set S into itself can be defined if the number of resources is unrestricted, only a specific subclass of such functions is defined by minimal reaction systems, that is, the number of resources is smallest possible. On the other hand, minimal reaction systems constitute a very elegant model. In this paper we simulate arbitrary reaction systems by minimal ones in two derivation steps. Various techniques for doing this consist of taking names of reactions or names of subsets as elements of the background set. In this way also subset functions not at all definable by reaction systems can be generated. We follow the original definition of reaction systems, where both reactant and inhibitor sets are assumed to be nonempty

Descriptional Complexity of Finite Automata -- Selected Highlights

The state complexity, respectively, nondeterministic state complexity of a regular language $L$ is the number of states of the minimal deterministic, respectively, of a minimal nondeterministic finite automaton for $L$. Some of the most studied state complexity questions deal with size comparisons of nondeterministic finite automata of differing degree of ambiguity. More generally, if for a regular language we compare the size of description by a finite automaton and by a more powerful language definition mechanism, such as a context-free grammar, we encounter non-recursive trade-offs. Operational state complexity studies the state complexity of the language resulting from a regularity preserving operation as a function of the complexity of the argument languages. Determining the state complexity of combined operations is generally challenging and for general combinations of operations that include intersection and marked concatenation it is uncomputable

2-Testability and Relabelings Produce Everything

AbstractWe show that grammar systems with communication by command and with extremely simple rewriting rules (in fact, only relabelings are needed) are able to generate all recursively enumerable languages. The result settles several open problems in the area of grammar systems. We also present the result in a general framework, without referring to grammar systems, obtaining a characterization of recursively enumerable languages from a new point of view

On the decidability of homomorphism equivalence for languages

AbstractWe consider decision problems of the following type. Given a language L and two homomorphisms h1 and h2, one has to determine to what extent h1 and h2 agree on L. For instance, we say that h1 and h2 are equivalent on L if h1(ω) = h2(ω) holds for each ω ε L. In our main theorem we present an algorithm for deciding whether two given homomorphisms are equivalent on a given context-free language. This result also gives an algorithm for deciding whether the translations defined by two deterministic gsm mappings agree on a given context-free language