This is a review of a set of recent papers with some new data added. After a
brief biological introduction a visualization scheme of the string composition
of long DNA sequences, in particular, of bacterial complete genomes, will be
described. This scheme leads to a class of self-similar and self-overlapping
fractals in the limit of infinitely long constotuent strings. The calculation
of their exact dimensions and the counting of true and redundant avoided
strings at different string lengths turn out to be one and the same problem. We
give exact solution of the problem using two independent methods: the
Goulden-Jackson cluster method in combinatorics and the method of formal
language theory.Comment: 24 pages, LaTeX, 5 PostScript figures (two in color), psfi