A function on an algebra is congruence preserving if, for any congruence, it maps pairs of congruent elements onto pairs of congruent elements. An algebra is said to be affine complete if every congruence preserving function is a polynomial function. We show that the algebra of (possibly empty) binary trees whose leaves are labeled by letters of an alphabet containing at least one letter, and the free monoid on an alphabet containing at least two letters are affine complete.

Given two strings, text t of length n, and pattern p = p1 : : : pk of length k, and given a natural number w, the subsequence matching problem consists in finding the number of size w windows of text t which contain pattern p as a subsequence, i.e. the letters p1 ; : : : ; pk occur in the window, in the same order as in p, but not necessarily consecutively (they may be interleaved with other letters). Subsequence matching is used for finding frequent patterns and association rules in databases. We generalize the Knuth-Morris-Pratt (KMP) pattern matching algorithm; we define a non-conventional kind of RAM, the MP--RAMs which model more closely the microprocessor operations; we design an O(n) on-line algorithm for solving the subsequence matching problem on MP--RAMs. Keywords: Subsequence matching, algorithms, frequent patterns, episode matching, datamining. 1 Introduction We address the following problem. Given a text t of length n and a pattern p = p 1 \\Delta \\Delta \\Delta p k of l...

Abstract Let be a first-order structure; we denote by DEF( ) the set of all first-order definable relations and functions within . Let π be any one-to-one function from ℕ into the set of prime integers. Let ∣ and • be respectively the divisibility relation and multiplication as function. We show that the sets DEF(ℕ, π, ∣) and DEF(ℕ, π, •) are equal. However there exists function π such that the set DEF(ℕ, +, ∣), or, equivalently, DEF(ℕ, π, •) is not equal to DEF(ℕ, +, •). Nevertheless, in all cases there is an {π, •}-definable and hence also {π, |}-definable structure over π which is isomorphic to 〈ℕ, +, •〉. Hence theories TH(ℕ, π, ∣) and TH(ℕ, π, •) are undecidable. The binary relation of equipotence between two positive integers saying that they have equal number of prime divisors is not definable within the divisibility lattice over positive integers. We prove it first by comparing the lower bound of the computational complexity of the additive theory of positive integers and of the upper bound of the computational complexity of the theory of the mentioned lattice. The last section provides a self-contained alternative proof of this latter result based on a decision method linked to an elimination of quantifiers via specific tables.