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A new approach to regular & indeterminate strings
Journal article   Peer reviewed

A new approach to regular & indeterminate strings

F.A. Louza, N. Mhaskar and W.F. Smyth
Theoretical Computer Science, Vol.854, pp.105-115
2021
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Abstract

In this paper we propose a new, more appropriate definition of regular and indeterminate strings. A regular string is one that is “isomorphic” to a string whose entries all consist of a single letter, but which nevertheless may itself include entries containing multiple letters. A string that is not regular is said to be indeterminate. We begin by proposing a new model for the representation of strings, regular or indeterminate, then go on to describe a linear time algorithm to determine whether or not a string is regular and, if so, to replace it by a lexicographically least (lex-least) string y whose entries are all single letters. Furthermore, we connect the regularity of a string to the transitive closure problem on a graph, which in our special case can be efficiently solved. We then introduce the idea of a feasible palindrome array MP of a string, and prove that every feasible MP corresponds to some (regular or indeterminate) string. We describe an algorithm that constructs a string x corresponding to given feasible MP, while ensuring that whenever possible x is regular and if so, then lex-least. A final section outlines new research directions suggested by this changed perspective on regular and indeterminate strings.

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Citation topics
4 Electrical Engineering, Electronics & Computer Science
4.182 Data Structures, Algorithms & Complexity
4.182.1103 Efficient Algorithms
Web Of Science research areas
Computer Science, Theory & Methods
ESI research areas
Computer Science
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