Straight-line program length as a parameter for complexity measures

Abstract

This paper represents a continuation of work in [LBI] and [LB2] directed toward the development of a unified, relative model for complexity theory. The earlier papers establish a simple, natural and fairly general model, and demonstrated its attractiveness by using it to state and prove a variety of technical results. The present paper uses the same model but deals more specifically with the problems involved in stating complexity bounds in a usable closed form for arbitrary operations on arbitrary data types. Work currently in progress is directed toward similar unified treatment of complexity of data structures.