The Generalized Fine-Wilf Theorem and Hamming Distance for Conjugates
Jeffrey O. Shallit · arXiv (Cornell University) · 2007
Let x, y be strings of equal length. The Hamming distance h(x,y) between x and y is the number of positions in which x and y differ. If x is a cyclic shift of y, we say x and y are conjugates. We consider f(x,y), the Hamming distance between the conjugates xy and yx, and show it is never equal to 1; the proof uses a new generalization of the Fine-Wilf theorem. Over a binary alphabet f(x,y) is always even, and must satisfy a further technical condition. By contrast, over an alphabet of size 3 or greater, f(x,y) can take any value between 0 and |x|+|y|, except 1; furthermore, we can always assume that the smaller string has only one type of letter.