We study two extensions of FO2[<], first-order logic interpreted in finite
words, in which formulas are restricted to use only two variables. We adjoin to
this language two-variable atomic formulas that say, "the letter a appears
between positions x and y" and "the factor u appears between positions
x and y". These are, in a sense, the simplest properties that are not
expressible using only two variables.
We present several logics, both first-order and temporal, that have the same
expressive power, and find matching lower and upper bounds for the complexity
of satisfiability for each of these formulations. We give effective conditions,
in terms of the syntactic monoid of a regular language, for a property to be
expressible in these logics. This algebraic analysis allows us to prove, among
other things, that our new logics have strictly less expressive power than full
first-order logic FO[<]. Our proofs required the development of novel
techniques concerning factorizations of words