The -digraph optimization problem and the greedy algorithm

In this paper we present a new optimization problem and a general class of objective functions for this problem. We show that optimal solutions to this problem with these objective functions are found with a simple greedy algorithm. Special cases include matroids, Huffman's data compression problem, a special class of greedoids, a special class of min cost max flow problems (related to Monge sequences), a special class of weighted f-factor problems, and some new problems.