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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.

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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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Documents authored by Urbina, Cristian

Morphisms and BWT-Run Sensitivity

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On the Impact of Morphisms on BWT-Runs

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L-Systems for Measuring Repetitiveness

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