The insertion encoding of permutations

Abstract

We introduce the insertion encoding, an encoding of finite permutations. Classes of permutations whose insertion encodings form a regular language are characterized. Some necessary conditions are provided for a class of permutations to have insertion encodings that form a context free language. Applications of the insertion encoding to the evaluation of generating functions for classes of permutations, construction of polynomial time algorithms for enumerating such classes, and the illustration of bijective equivalence between classes are demonstrated.