Abstract
This paper proposes and investigates the possibility of transforming a configuration of a P system (the membrane structure and the multisets of symbol-objects present in the compartments) into another configuration by means of a given set of rules to be applied to the membranes and to the multisets of objects. Although this transformation is obtained during the computation in a P system, we consider it as a goal per se, as a pre-computation phase, when the system itself is built. In this framework, several important problems appear: the edit-distance between configurations (with respect to a given set of editing rules), normal forms, the reachability of configurations, or the existence of single configurations from which a given family of configurations can be constructed, only to mention a few. We investigate here some of these questions; the paper is mainly devoted to formulating problems in the new framework, to calling attention to the possible extensions and the usefulness of the present approach.
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