Elements of Free Monoids#

AUTHORS:

David Kohel (2005-09-29)

Elements of free monoids are represented internally as lists of pairs of integers.

class sage.monoids.free_monoid_element.FreeMonoidElement(F, x, check=True)#

Bases: MonoidElement

Element of a free monoid.

EXAMPLES:

sage: a = FreeMonoid(5, 'a').gens()
sage: x = a[0]*a[1]*a[4]**3
sage: x**3
a0*a1*a4^3*a0*a1*a4^3*a0*a1*a4^3
sage: x**0
1
sage: x**(-1)
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
NotImplementedError

to_list(indices=False)#

Return self as a list of generators.

If self equals \(x_{i_1} x_{i_2} \cdots x_{i_n}\), with \(x_{i_1}, x_{i_2}, \ldots, x_{i_n}\) being some of the generators of the free monoid, then this method returns the list \([x_{i_1}, x_{i_2}, \ldots, x_{i_n}]\).

If the optional argument indices is set to True, then the list \([i_1, i_2, \ldots, i_n]\) is returned instead.

EXAMPLES:

sage: M.<x,y,z> = FreeMonoid(3)
sage: a = x * x * y * x
sage: w = a.to_list(); w
[x, x, y, x]
sage: M.prod(w) == a
True
sage: w = a.to_list(indices=True); w
[0, 0, 1, 0]
sage: a = M.one()
sage: a.to_list()
[]