Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 July 2016
We consider the problem of reorganizing a linear list, when the individual queries consist of accesses to a subset of the elements stored, as opposed to the individual elements themselves. In this paper, which to our knowledge represents the first reported result in this model of query processing, we first propose a simple model for a query generator which emits set queries. Subsequently, we present extensions to the classical move-to-front (MTF) and transposition (TR) rules under this generalized query generation mechanism and analyze their performance.
A preliminary version of some of the results contained in this paper were presented at Fundamentals of Computation Theory, FCT'91, Berlin.
The work of the first author was supported by a postgraduate award from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada, as well as a postgraduate award, from Bell-Northern Research. The work of the second author was supported by NSERC of Canada. The work of the third author was supported by an NSERC summer grant.