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Documents authored by Urbina, Cristian

Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.17
Sensitivity of Repetitiveness Measures to String Reversal

Authors: Hideo Bannai, Yuto Fujie, Peaker Guo, Shunsuke Inenaga, Yuto Nakashima, Simon J. Puglisi, and Cristian Urbina

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 369, 37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026)

Abstract
We study the impact that string reversal can have on several repetitiveness measures. First, we exhibit an infinite family of strings where the number, r, of runs in the run-length encoding of the Burrows-Wheeler transform (BWT) can increase additively by Θ(n) when reversing the string. This substantially improves the known Ω(log n) lower-bound for the additive sensitivity of r and it is asymptotically tight. We generalize our result to other variants of the BWT, including the variant with an appended end-of-string symbol and the bijective BWT. We show that an analogous result holds for the size z of the Lempel-Ziv 77 (LZ) parsing of the text, and also for some of its variants, including the non-overlapping LZ parsing, and the LZ-end parsing. Moreover, we describe a family of strings for which the ratio z(w^R)/z(w) approaches 3 from below as |w| → ∞. We also show an asymptotically tight lower-bound of Θ(n) for the additive sensitivity of the size v of the smallest lexicographic parsing to string reversal. Finally, we show that the multiplicative sensitivity of v to reversing the string is Θ(log n), and this lower-bound is also tight. Overall, our results expose the limitations of repetitiveness measures that are widely used in practice, against string reversal - a simple and natural data transformation.
Cite as

Hideo Bannai, Yuto Fujie, Peaker Guo, Shunsuke Inenaga, Yuto Nakashima, Simon J. Puglisi, and Cristian Urbina. Sensitivity of Repetitiveness Measures to String Reversal. In 37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 369, pp. 17:1-17:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{bannai_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2026.17,
  author =	{Bannai, Hideo and Fujie, Yuto and Guo, Peaker and Inenaga, Shunsuke and Nakashima, Yuto and Puglisi, Simon J. and Urbina, Cristian},
  title =	{{Sensitivity of Repetitiveness Measures to String Reversal}},
  booktitle =	{37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026)},
  pages =	{17:1--17:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-420-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{369},
  editor =	{Bille, Philip and Prezza, Nicola},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.17},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-259434},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.17},
  annote =	{Keywords: String reversal, Repetitiveness measures, Burrows-Wheeler transform, Lempel-Ziv parsing, Lexicographic parsings}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.24
On Occurrence-Preserving Morphisms

Authors: Kaisei Kishi, Peaker Guo, Cristian Urbina, and Hideo Bannai

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 369, 37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026)

Abstract
A morphism is a mapping that transforms words through letter-wise substitution, where each symbol is consistently replaced by a fixed word. In the field of combinatorics on words, one topic that has attracted considerable attention is the characterization of morphisms that preserve specific properties, such as overlap-freeness, square-freeness, lexicographic order, and primitivity. Continuing this direction, we initiate the study on occurrence-preserving morphisms, which address the following fundamental question: given a morphism ϕ, two words u and v, and k ≥ 1, under what conditions does the number of occurrences of u in v equal the number of occurrences of ϕ^k(u) in ϕ^k(v)? To answer this question, we introduce the notion of interference-free morphisms, examine their properties, and uncover a connection to recognizable morphisms. We then present a precise characterization of occurrence-preserving morphisms in terms of interference-freeness. As applications of our characterization, we first show that there exists a bijection between the starting positions of the occurrences of u in v and those of ϕ^k(u) in ϕ^k(v). We then apply the characterization to the Fibonacci and Thue-Morse words to identify their minimal unique substrings (MUSs). Finally, we exploit the connection between MUSs and net occurrences to simplify existing proofs on net occurrences in these words.
Cite as

Kaisei Kishi, Peaker Guo, Cristian Urbina, and Hideo Bannai. On Occurrence-Preserving Morphisms. In 37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 369, pp. 24:1-24:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{kishi_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2026.24,
  author =	{Kishi, Kaisei and Guo, Peaker and Urbina, Cristian and Bannai, Hideo},
  title =	{{On Occurrence-Preserving Morphisms}},
  booktitle =	{37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026)},
  pages =	{24:1--24:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-420-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{369},
  editor =	{Bille, Philip and Prezza, Nicola},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.24},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-259504},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.24},
  annote =	{Keywords: Property-preserving morphisms, interference-free morphisms, recognizable morphisms, injective morphisms, Fibonacci words, Thue-Morse words, minimal unique substrings (MUSs), net occurrences}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.49
Morphisms and BWT-Run Sensitivity

Authors: Gabriele Fici, Giuseppe Romana, Marinella Sciortino, and Cristian Urbina

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 345, 50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025)

Abstract
We study how the application of morphisms affects the number r of equal-letter runs in the Burrows–Wheeler Transform (BWT). This parameter has emerged as a key repetitiveness measure in compressed indexing. We focus on the notion of BWT-run sensitivity after application of morphisms. For binary alphabets, we characterize the class of injective morphisms that preserve the number of BWT-runs up to a bounded additive increase by showing that it coincides with the known class of primitivity-preserving morphisms, which are those that map primitive words to primitive words. We further prove that deciding whether a given binary morphism has bounded BWT-run sensitivity is possible in polynomial time with respect to the total length of the images of the two letters. Additionally, we explore new structural and combinatorial properties of synchronizing and recognizable morphisms. These results establish new connections between BWT-based compressibility, code theory, and symbolic dynamics.
Cite as

Gabriele Fici, Giuseppe Romana, Marinella Sciortino, and Cristian Urbina. Morphisms and BWT-Run Sensitivity. In 50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 345, pp. 49:1-49:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{fici_et_al:LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.49,
  author =	{Fici, Gabriele and Romana, Giuseppe and Sciortino, Marinella and Urbina, Cristian},
  title =	{{Morphisms and BWT-Run Sensitivity}},
  booktitle =	{50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025)},
  pages =	{49:1--49:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-388-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{345},
  editor =	{Gawrychowski, Pawe{\l} and Mazowiecki, Filip and Skrzypczak, Micha{\l}},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.49},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-241567},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.49},
  annote =	{Keywords: Burrows-Wheeler transform, BWT-runs, morphism, pure code, repetitiveness}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2023.10
On the Impact of Morphisms on BWT-Runs

Authors: Gabriele Fici, Giuseppe Romana, Marinella Sciortino, and Cristian Urbina

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 259, 34th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2023)

Abstract
Morphisms are widely studied combinatorial objects that can be used for generating infinite families of words. In the context of Information theory, injective morphisms are called (variable length) codes. In Data compression, the morphisms, combined with parsing techniques, have been recently used to define new mechanisms to generate repetitive words. Here, we show that the repetitiveness induced by applying a morphism to a word can be captured by a compression scheme based on the Burrows-Wheeler Transform (BWT). In fact, we prove that, differently from other compression-based repetitiveness measures, the measure r_bwt (which counts the number of equal-letter runs produced by applying BWT to a word) strongly depends on the applied morphism. More in detail, we characterize the binary morphisms that preserve the value of r_bwt(w), when applied to any binary word w containing both letters. They are precisely the Sturmian morphisms, which are well-known objects in Combinatorics on words. Moreover, we prove that it is always possible to find a binary morphism that, when applied to any binary word containing both letters, increases the number of BWT-equal letter runs by a given (even) number. In addition, we derive a method for constructing arbitrarily large families of binary words on which BWT produces a given (even) number of new equal-letter runs. Such results are obtained by using a new class of morphisms that we call Thue-Morse-like. Finally, we show that there exist binary morphisms μ for which it is possible to find words w such that the difference r_bwt(μ(w))-r_bwt(w) is arbitrarily large.
Cite as

Gabriele Fici, Giuseppe Romana, Marinella Sciortino, and Cristian Urbina. On the Impact of Morphisms on BWT-Runs. In 34th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 259, pp. 10:1-10:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)

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@InProceedings{fici_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2023.10,
  author =	{Fici, Gabriele and Romana, Giuseppe and Sciortino, Marinella and Urbina, Cristian},
  title =	{{On the Impact of Morphisms on BWT-Runs}},
  booktitle =	{34th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2023)},
  pages =	{10:1--10:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-276-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{259},
  editor =	{Bulteau, Laurent and Lipt\'{a}k, Zsuzsanna},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2023.10},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-179641},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2023.10},
  annote =	{Keywords: Morphism, Burrows-Wheeler transform, Sturmian word, Sturmian morphism, Thue-Morse morphism, Repetitiveness measure}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2023.25
L-Systems for Measuring Repetitiveness

Authors: Gonzalo Navarro and Cristian Urbina

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 259, 34th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2023)

Abstract
In order to use them for compression, we extend L-systems (without ε-rules) with two parameters d and n, and also a coding τ, which determines unambiguously a string w = τ(φ^d(s))[1:n], where φ is the morphism of the system, and s is its axiom. The length of the shortest description of an L-system generating w is known as 𝓁, and it is arguably a relevant measure of repetitiveness that builds on the self-similarities that arise in the sequence. In this paper, we deepen the study of the measure 𝓁 and its relation with a better-established measure called δ, which builds on substring complexity. Our results show that 𝓁 and δ are largely orthogonal, in the sense that one can be much larger than the other, depending on the case. This suggests that both mechanisms capture different kinds of regularities related to repetitiveness. We then show that the recently introduced NU-systems, which combine the capabilities of L-systems with bidirectional macro schemes, can be asymptotically strictly smaller than both mechanisms for the same fixed string family, which makes the size ν of the smallest NU-system the unique smallest reachable repetitiveness measure to date. We conclude that in order to achieve better compression, we should combine morphism substitution with copy-paste mechanisms.
Cite as

Gonzalo Navarro and Cristian Urbina. L-Systems for Measuring Repetitiveness. In 34th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 259, pp. 25:1-25:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)

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@InProceedings{navarro_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2023.25,
  author =	{Navarro, Gonzalo and Urbina, Cristian},
  title =	{{L-Systems for Measuring Repetitiveness}},
  booktitle =	{34th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2023)},
  pages =	{25:1--25:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-276-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{259},
  editor =	{Bulteau, Laurent and Lipt\'{a}k, Zsuzsanna},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2023.25},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-179792},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2023.25},
  annote =	{Keywords: L-systems, String morphisms, Repetitiveness measures, Text compression}
}
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