BWT and Combinatorics on Words

The Burrows-Wheeler Transform (BWT) is a reversible transformation on words (strings) introduced in 1994 in the context of data compression, which is a permutation of the characters in the word. Its clustering effect, i.e., the remarkable property of grouping identical characters (BWT runs) when they share common contexts, has made it a powerful tool for boosting compression performances and enabling efficient pattern searching in highly repetitive string collections. In this chapter, we analyze the Burrows-Wheeler transform under the combinatorial point of view, and we survey known properties and connections with different aspects of combinatorics on words. In particular, we focus on the properties of words in relation to the number of their BWT runs. The value r, which counts the number of BWT runs, impacts both compression performance and indexing efficiency, and is considered a measure to evaluate the above-mentioned clustering effect and, consequently, the repetitiveness of a word. We give an overview of the results relating r to other combinatorial repetitiveness measures related to the factor complexity. The chapter also explores extremal cases of the clustering effect. Finally, some results on the sensitivity of the measure r are considered, where the effects of combinatorial operations are studied, such as reversal, edits, and the application of morphisms.